a visit to a Russian car and motorbike show, April 2025

 

As readers are probably aware, the Biden administration and the EU made Russia the world's most sanctioned country in 2022, but it doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference to everyday life for most people.

a night scene in Santa Fe's Argentine, Kansas, freight yard, 1943

One of Jack Delano's great photos.

1970 Marcos 2L Coupe

'I love looking for good real books to read'

travel by ship on Lake Päijänne, Finland, poster, 1930

Lake Päijänne is the second largest lake in Finland at 1,080 km2 (266,874 acres). The lake drains into the Gulf of Finland via the Kymi River.  There are still several ships that operate on it in the summer months for tourists.

Kar-Air poster, Finland, 1957

The airline Karhumäki Airways was founded in 1947, but challenging the then state monopoly was not easy since the authorities favored Aero in many ways. In June 1951 scheduled services began between Helsinki and Joensuu, Jyväskylä, Vaasa and Sundsvall. Initially operating on domestic routes with a fleet of four Douglas DC-3 and two Convair CV-440 Metropolitan airliners, the first international flight (to Stockholm) took place in 1951, which was followed by holiday flights to Málaga. Soon it was the first in Finland to offer charter flights to the south.  The name was shortened to Kar-Air in 1956. It ceased in 1996, merging into Finnair.

More

traffic in Calle Sarandi, Montevideo, Uruguay, 1920s

 Electric trams in Montevideo ran from 1906 to 1957.

Chicago rail freight yard, 1950s

Linke Hofmann Busch-built new diesel trains for Mexico and Germany, 1953

This promo photo shows two new diesel trains built in Germany by Linke Hofmann Busch. It was LHB's first order for such trains after 1945, consisting of articulated diesel sets for the Ferrocarril del Sur Este in Mexico -- in reality, a replica of the Reichsbahn's "Schnelltriebwagen" (high speed railcar), but with a top speed of 120 km/h. Six such trains were built.

Next to it is the Deutsche Bundesbahn's "Senator" diesel train (VT 10 501). Fine looking, but a total mistake. Delivered shortly before the German Transport Exhibition of 1953, the first problems occurred on the way from Salzgitter to Munich. After the exhibition, the DB was planning to use this train on the Frankfurt--Hamburg route, but only a year later the first regular run was made and two months later the train was stopped again after repeated failures. New and unsuccessful trials followed, and in 1959 the "Senator" train was out of use. It was finally scrapped in 1963, making a comeback in 2008 as an HO scale model by Marklin, (Historical Railway Images)

James May's trip with a companion in a driverless Waymo car in L.A.

 Would you want to do this?  

The Waymo website