Snow and steam

I remember the winter of 1963. School was closed for time when the outside toilets froze up. We thawed our 1/3 pint bottles of milk around the stove in our classroom.

On 1 February, 1963, Geoffrey Jones began filming "Snow" which was to win 14 major awards and an Oscar nomination in 1965. Jones was already working on a film for the British Railways Board when he had the idea of making a film contrasting the comfort of the passengers with the efforts of the workmen to keep the trains running during this abnormal winter.

The footage we see is mostly from the Western Region. There is also a tantalising glimpse of a Somerset and Dorset freight train as well as some archive pre-WW II shots of Jubilee class locomotive 'Barbados'.

Bicycle safety

More and more people are taking to their bikes as a means of transport. Here is a film by the (US) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on safely driving, fitting and maintaining a bicycle.


They also have a leaflet about cycle safety.

Bus ridership increasing

I heard on the CBC recently that transit companies in both Halifax and St.John are seeing increased ridership. With the cost of gas, this is hardly surprising.

Other areas are reporting similar increases. In Colorado, bus driver Chris Gray says he has seen plenty of evidence that people are using transit as an alternative to driving themselves. In Michigan ridership is up 7% this year, and "Gas prices are doing what all the practical and common-sense arguments for mass transit have been unable to do -- driving people to change". In Bournemouth, England, figures show the number of bus passenger journeys has increased by 18 per cent in the last year. In Adelaide ridership is up 18% since 2000 and some services are reaching capacity.