Well There's Your Problem | Episode 52: 1996 Channel Tunnel Fire

[@Fuzzycuffsqt]

There, Yon Problem Doth Be: A Most Excellente Oration Featuring Tapestries

[@williamchamberlain2263]

A most enjoyable tale

[@malikshakur1306]

sounds jamaican

[@atl7398]

Das why it all bus up: Three haole talk story wi pitcha

[@lightyearsfromhome5385]

"De Wa, Anata No Mondai Ga Arimasu": kore wa hanashi to shashin desu.

[@RailwayScholar]

Da hast du den Salat: Die Hördiskussion mit informativen Folien

[@a.gravemistake3061]

Schrodinger's smoke alarm, wherein the train is simultaneously on fire and not on fire until after my 45 minute union smoke break

[@tompain9735]

If the break never ends the train can never be on fire.

[@deepspacemachines]

its the smoke alarm, clearly alarming you of the need for a smoke

[@williamchamberlain2263]

@@tompain9735 Longer breaks save lives

[@melpomeneb-smith3955]

"2am in the morning..." *Rocz pauses to be yelled at* "3am the next morning..." *Rocz pauses slightly longer, amazed he's getting away with this*

[@massimocole9689]

1:21:13

[@pastell6395]

The way Liam says "hey buddy" always invokes that ven diagram >consoling children >hyping dog >starting a fight

[@falloutghoul1]

Which one is the overlap?

[@carmastrikes]

@@falloutghoul1 no overlap, just starting a fight

[@MesaAufenhand]

@@falloutghoul1 he's consoling children while hyping up a dog for a fight against the thing that made the children cry

[@alexmuller6752]

@@falloutghoul1 the overlap is "hey buddy"

[@massimocole9689]

1:31:21

[@Derrick_Campana]

For once this shows lack of an upload schedule plays in our favor

[@Meatloaf_TV]

Lol

[@Quintinohthree]

Reminds me, most train delays I've experienced worked in my favour. My usual bus was scheduled to arrive almost exactly when a train I could take was scheduled to depart, so whenever that train had a delay, I could effectively tale a train earlier than I could normally plan on (15 minutes earlier) which would normally stop for a good 5 minutes at the next station, but shorter in case of delays, so by my destination the delay has vanished and I could get onto the connecting train 30 minutes earlier than I could normally plan. I know, it's weird, but it just worked.

[@Murammassa]

@@Quintinohthree the best kind of work is the "it just works"

[@peter_smyth]

@@Quintinohthree I had something similar once. I'd left my ticket at home, but remembered when I was halfway to the station, so ran back and got it. I was seven minutes late to the station when I got my ticket, but the train was also seven minutes late, so I could still catch it.

[@WaterMan416]

They wanted to rush it out so that the guy who tased his balls was still relevant and not overshadowed by yet another fucking thing in January 2021.

[@Aevintyra]

The Drive Out Strategy: RIP to people who die in tunnel fires, but I'm different.

[@NPC45100]

Driving the on-fire train out of the tunnel is a dumb fire fighting strategy, HOWEVER, a flaming fireball of a train screaming down a tunnel and screeching to a halt into a stream of water cannons is really cool to picture and is metal as fuck. \m/

[@downsjmmyjones101]

"I'm going off the rails on a crazy train."

[@mattkrier5856]

Literally the "We're still flying half a ship" from Revenge of the Sith

[@alexmain8457]

The tenets of the pod: 1. Everything leaks 2. Train good 3. Car bad 4. Every as-built must exist in copy burn form only 5. Extinguish fire with cum 6. Dates are a bad sign 7. Radiation is spicy rocks 8. Water is heavier than you think 9. Safety comes third 10. Tacoma Narrows is always next week

[@ClaudiaNW]

11. Fish bad 12. The Netherlands worst country 13. Cruise ships are an affront to God 14. Transatlantic travel should be slow and inefficient 15. Racism against Italians doesn't count

[@Slappap]

15. Philly sucks

[@diestormlie]

You forgot "More rigid good."

[@EmyrDerfel]

10b. Eventually the next episode is Chernobyl.

[@sideways5153]

11. Don’t look at the pretty blue light

[@moorishdignity8527]

I once got a temp job breaking down stages and tents for Cirque du Soleil when they came to Pittsburgh. I was partnered with a French guy with a perpetual cigarette who had worked for them for years. Literally 1 min into every single task we were given he would throw up his hands and say "eez eemposseeble" and give up. I'll never forget him. This episode really brought him to mind. Merci.

[@NadarCosainAmber]

Recently discovered and doing a binge. I love it how in the last ep, some random a**hole in the comments was complaining about the amount of history/background was being given to the topic. And then this episode, Roz started the history in 1066. Legend.

[@theo_korner]

Table of Contents: 0:00 Intro, pronouns and other stuff 3:28 The god damn news: will Biden have the balls to undo America? 10:43 History of the channel tunnel - starting in the middle ages 28:55 Thatchers not quite so road tunnel 34:10 The trains of the tunnel: The return of the Germans 43:48 There are safety features in the tunnel 50:43 Incidents - one such incident 54:57 Things are not looking great 1:13:22 This is fine, but it actually isn't 1:18:42 Remember last episodes standpipes? 1:22:35 Aftermath 1:26:19 But is it Thatchers fault? 1:27:13 And there never was a fire again... 1:29:53 Intermission 1:31:50 Safety Third - Shake Hands with Danger

[@melissametivier4]

1:26:33 cremated, like a truck

[@Jablicek]

Doing a deity's work there, sir &/or madam.

[@DeadWhiteButterflies]

You're a pillar of this community, mate. Thanks. No, really.

[@semirrahge]

Take the upvote. We love you.

[@cyrusbailey4223]

+

[@patrickmattin9609]

2 Episodes in one week? Now this is podcasting.

[@Meatloaf_TV]

That's what I was saying

[@robertyoung4275]

It's a Podmas miracle!

[@alfalafelstine1536]

Lets go for 3!!!

[@marinary1326]

I get that reference

[@CatFish107]

oh wow, you're right. One Meridian was only 2 days ago!

[@viniciusdesouzamaia]

"It's our duty to remember that one of the people who died tased himself in the balls, whether that happened or not". The true historian spirit, Alice. Let nobody speak otherwise.

[@BiggestCorvid]

Those are absolutely the kind of people that spend their time talking about 'what people are saying'

[@artistwithouttalent]

"[T]he best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism-and the best journalists have always known this." Hunter S. Thompson

[@alexmcp5153]

I'm the guy who sent the safety 3rd this week. Ty to the hosts for reading it. Also I'm Italian-American & 100% endorse the anti-Italian discrimination in the segment

[@catstorm26]

Glad you survived the hit movie "The Italian Job"

[@ultrablue8847]

Fun fact about the Horold arrow thing: that is Harold getting shot but also the weavers never thought he got shot in the eye. Getting an arrow in the eye was symbolic of being an oath breaker and William's family who commissioned the tapestry liked to claim they had divine right to rule (much like all royalty) and the way they justified that involved an old promise about land that meant Harold should have given it to them and had it coming. People started to take it literally later when that symbolism went out of fashion, but showing him like that would be a little like someone now doing a painting of a politician with their pants on fire right around their death. Everyone now would know it meant the artist was calling them a liar but someone might eventually think they burned to death. Which is why, for the sake of future historians' sanity, you should use your words instead of doing passive aggressive crafts.

[@joshuahadams]

Is this related in any way to “cross you hear and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye” as a form of a promise?

[@ken-dog]

But really, isn't all history passive aggressive crafts?

[@VegasLounge]

1:30:00 Oof. Memories. I'm a tour guide myself in a hot climate and one year was working for a really unscrupulous owner. That summer was brutal- one guide literally passed out from the heat and the owner refused to pay her for that tour as she hadn't completed it. Most companies here don't do tours at noon in Summer because it's just too hot, but I had a 90-minute noontime tour of 10-year-old Girl Scouts who hadn't been told to bring water because said owner owned a corner store where we were encouraged to "casually stop in" as a part of the tour. I cut that tour short because I was literally afraid that those children would get heatstroke. That's been the only job I've quit because I couldn't work for such a morally awful person- the last I heard, the heads of the reputable tour companies ran him out of town because he was making all of us look bad. Good riddance.

[@lasschesteven]

As a Dutch person, I can confirm that most of us will just drop slurs regularly. Half of us even seem completely unaware that it's an offensive thing to do. Like, I've heard people talk in favour of inclusivity and still use slurs for black people and immigrants while doing so.

[@GrijzePilion]

I was talking to someone about gypsy integration the other day and how we're basically still being openly racist against them in this country.....and then I realized the problem so bad that I can't even recall any politically correct names for their group of people. People don't use them. I'm sure if you ask they'll know who the Romani are but they just call them gypsies, and it's only been a few years since regular Dutch people were openly using N-words and other loaded terms. This is going to take a while.....

[@lasschesteven]

@@GrijzePilion Allow me to disappoint you on that "a few years since" thing. People are still openly using the n-word. What do you think the slur against black people in my original comment was?

[@huseyx2]

Yeah, the we're-not-racist racism is so bad there. Whilst job hunting, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise why IT jobs in international companies (which are all done in English) were advertised as "must speak fluent Dutch". D'oh.

[@GrijzePilion]

Or the fact that if you have a foreign-sounding name you are considerably less likely to be invited to job interviews. Now I'd much rather live here than in a place like the United States, but neither is a shining example of peace and equality.

[@whym6438]

@@GrijzePilion American Jew here, just wanted to say that my parents would be horrified if anyone used "Jewed" to mean "swindled, but they'll still use "gypped", because they don't know any better.

[@GarethDennisTV]

oh god I have so many gauging stories about the Class 373 Regional trains, also about how they would blow up people's kettles along the line if it exceeded 110mph

[@Yugophoto]

Alice, you need to know that fire department golf carts are in fact, a thing. They are elongated and hold a stretcher to use as an ambulance at events and stuff where a normal ambulance wont fit.

[@lars7935]

A fire department near me had a Quad-Bike with two seats and a bit of equipment as well as a small trailer for a stretcher to go into a large mall (there were some ramps behind the shops). They got rid of it after they found out it was faster to just walk.

[@NotJustBikes]

Oh man, I just finished your last podcast only last night. I can't keep up! (I didn't say you should stop)

[@PobortzaPl]

Roz: Berlin, Warsaw... Me: Is it going to be Barbarossa joke? Roz: Moscow... Well, not quite Moscow Me: Should I be worried I knew it was Barbarossa joke?

[@kingofthemoon3063]

Mocking the Nazis and their hubris is instinctual. It’s part of who we are.

[@PobortzaPl]

@@kingofthemoon3063 Mocking Nazis is not only a duty but a pleasure.

[@maisatanel]

i thought this is about russian rail gauge being wider tbh

[@XTremeCaffeine]

One slightly disappointing element: all this talk of William The Conqueror, but no mention of his French name, Guillaume Le Batard, which means exactly what it sounds like.

[@deeznoots6241]

Tbf he is also known as William the bastard in english too

[@trashrabbit69]

If there's one thing that you could say monarchism was good for, it was the names. Once the climate apocalypse is upon us I will herein decree that in the new Waterworld I shall be named Trash Rabbit the Jackass Fucking Loser Dipshit Warlord.

[@WaterMan416]

Does this mean the English word for guillotine is willotine?

[@Raw774]

@@WaterMan416 yes

[@EmissaryofWind]

@@deeznoots6241 The one that exploded?

[@emotionalbabydragon3360]

Another so soon, maybe 2021 will be ok 😂

[@Meatloaf_TV]

Lol

[@inTIMMYdator44]

Ikr! Theyre really cranking em out

[@MrCzechTexan]

Plot twist: their bi-weekly engineering disaster podcasts cover the catastrophic bi-weekly engineering disasters of 2021

[@Meatloaf_TV]

@@MrCzechTexan lmap

[@petraoleum5816]

2021: Year of the Podcast (with slides)

[@vylbird8014]

"King Harold gets Pwned" is actually a fair translation.

[@nightw4tchman]

22:12 I had a full blown shouting at by a brexit supporter, oddly at a railway, pre referendum because I told him about Churchill's "United States of Europe" speech, he didn't take it well.

[@Frommerman]

This wasn't an engineering disasters podcast with slides. This was an hour and a half of shitting on France followed by half an hour of shitting on Philadelphia. And I'm here for it.

[@jamiekamihachi3135]

I think you’re mistaken... they also managed to fit a dig at Elon Musk in there too.

[@kingofthemoon3063]

@@CrashedBlossom their language is custom made to be hard for english speaking people to understand. None of the words sound how they are spelled, its madness! Unfortunate for the French however, is that it backfired and just made them easier to mock.

[@TidusleFlemard]

@@kingofthemoon3063 sorry to be late to the party, but that's a bit rich coming from an english speaker...

[@kingofthemoon3063]

@@TidusleFlemard Oh I'm aware. I feel like England and France were in an arms race to make the most bullshit language.

[@ClaudiaNW]

@@TidusleFlemard I don't know what you mean. In my hometown there are villages of Broughton, Loughton and Woughton. Pronounced "Braw-ton", "Lau-ton" and "Woof-ton" respectively. This is clearly a sensible, logical and consistent system of pronunciation.

[@jclementine3371]

"Okay, it's 48 km to Folkestone, it's dark, we're on fire and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it!"

[@robin8404]

The idea of sending a chase locomotive with a single plucky driver to tail a burning train is absolutely sending me

[@jasonfischer9857]

"We'll be done in 30 mins" 👀 *Glances at the video length*

[@TheRealE.B.]

I actually just learned about fire detectors today. Apparently, they are very useful for areas where certain chemicals that burn light blue are being used, such that there is a very real danger that the fire might go unnoticed (to the point of people walking into the fire as if it were a very clean glass door) in a well-light environment. Apparently, they rely on the fact that fire gives off a small amount of UV radiation that is detectable over the normal amount that makes it through the ozone layer from sunlight.

[@jizburg]

Why not use an infra red system?

[@TimperialBroadcastingAgency]

@@jizburg Here I am, two years late: I looked it up; fire detectors can use either or both, and both have advantages and disadvantages. UV is good for detecting fires /starting/ (which is good for fast-burning things like hydrocarbons) while IR is good for seeing fires that have, well, got stuff hot.

[@jizburg]

@@TimperialBroadcastingAgency good to knpw

[@nataliella97]

the italian kid stories are giving me flashbacks to this one italian exchange kid at my college last year. I'm pretty sure he either had a crush on me or was desperately lonely because he'd spend the hour before our russian class talking at me, and after a few weeks it began to dawn on me that he was at least fash adjacent? I don't understand why, but somehow this guy thought he could explain how eugenics is cool, actually, and some ethnic groups are just more naturally oriented towards crime or greed in a class filled with ex soviet jews and just have everyone treat him like he wasn't a piece of shit after. I'm only sad we went into lockdown in March because I was really looking forward to watching him get mercilessly dunked on for the rest of the semester

[@stiltpuppy]

There are two types of humble people: those who have been punched in the face, and those who have given themselves a black eye while attempting some kind of stunt.

[@sakelaine2953]

Someone can be both, the rare type three

[@stiltpuppy]

@@sakelaine2953 the maverick: nobody has the power to hurt me more than I have hurt myself

[@soniab78]

There are also the maniacs. They're the Loose Cannons. Rather than get a punch in the face, they start punching themselves in the head, yelling "well come on, then , motherfuckers, HIT ME!!!" Thus ensuring all lower-level maniacs back away nervously and no punches are thrown at their face. There is usually copious amounts of alcohol involved, often mixed with fun chemicals. For some reason the Loose Cannon is rarely seen wearing a shirt.

[@nunyabidnis3815]

@@stiltpuppy Also how most good comedians discover their talent.

[@1nown]

Uploaded technically on the anniversary of the Granville Rail Disaster, the most deadly Australian rail incident and one of many displays of why building bridges with pillars trains can run into is Bad.

[@johannageisel5390]

The Eschede derailment agrees with this notion.

[@1nown]

@@johannageisel5390 excuses for alice to say 'oh my gosh, look at her abutment'

[@johannageisel5390]

@@1nown I needed to look this work up in the dictionary. ^ ^

[@adamwhite2364]

The mere possibilities for a channel tunnel full of horse viscera from the first design probably quickened the pulse of every devoted WTYPP viewer

[@SadisticSenpai61]

"Cancelled right before they were to start" "due to expense" Why does that sound familiar? Oh yeah, that's what happened with WI's high speed rail plans. They had purchased the track, the engines, the cars, and were getting ready to start building it (for some stupid reason they were using narrow gauge track from Italy instead of standard US gauge). Scott Walker got into office and cancelled it because it cost too much... and it then proceeded to cost even more cancelling the project than building it would have specifically because they now had all this useless equipment that they had to sell which no one in the US wanted (or could even use), plus the cancellation fees from the contracts the state government had signed. Gotta love them fiscal conservatives, right? I know, Labour isn't the conservative party in the UK, nor were they at the time. But if it quacks like a duck...

[@musclecat1005]

Wait, we had plans for a high speed train?

[@SadisticSenpai61]

@@musclecat1005 Yup. We did here in Iowa too, altho we were still in the planning process. The Mustache (Branstad) shut it down here here. My partner's from WI. He still rants about it.

[@atn_holdings]

1:44:45 the Hard R Café

[@robin8404]

I can put this in the comments here because nobody died, unlike the last one: I'm just imagining the firefighters all set to hose down the flames, and then someone turns the big valve wheel and the water just trickles out, with a muted trombone going "bwaap bwaap bwaaaaaaaaaap"

[@booti_boi6927]

All these train related disasters will never shake my faith or steer me from the truth: train good

[@jclementine3371]

Nobody died in this one either! When a truck went up in the Mont Blanc Tunnel a few years later it killed 39 people, so yeah car bad, train good

[@ClaudiaNW]

Trains have been the best means of transport ever since their invention by George Train

[@deeznoots6241]

Car crashes happen too often to be considered disasters lol

[@austingrieve8976]

I assume Hugo’s only job is closing the door. He is the only one who closes the doors. He also has his own union.

[@bc175]

So this has been an awkward episode because my grandad was a Mechanical Engineer who helped design the safety systems on the Channel Tunnel... I'm not sure which we're his responsibility so every time one if the tunnels safety systems fail I've been shouting "god damn it grandad!!" Another great episode hopefully I won't have personally tie to the next one XD XD

[@xmlthegreat]

Must've been awkward lol. Hopefully your dad didn't build the bridge at Great Heck or something.

[@StarlightSocialist]

"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, *a horse splashes* ." Even in old timey biology texts, horse viscera going everywhere is a well known phenomena.

[@kwarra-an]

"The bayou tapestry" I love Liam

[@henrycurtis3652]

1066 movie adaptation with Cajuns playing the Normans, gammon playing the English, and idk random nonracist black metal musicians playing the Norwegians

[@sweetprimrose]

@@henrycurtis3652 Pretty sure this a lost episode of Metalocalypse

[@crutoniggy234]

Gonna write a fanfic about Elon Musk submitting a tunnel proposal to Margerat Thatcher and then they kiss.

[@ehsn]

"Fuck trains, screw shuttles, embrace pods."

[@blanksymortimer4088]

Please don't there's already so much evil in the world

[@TayBridgeDisaster]

Elons probably beaten you to it

[@bigmouthprick5852]

What a vivid image jfc

[@sovietblobfish]

the driver stayed on the train after everyone else left because they believed in 'going down with your ship' but for trains, truly inspiring

[@OpreRoma]

THANK YOU FOR SPOILING US Seriously, my nan (who essentially raised me) is gonna be dead in the next week or so thanks to alzheimers/pneumonia/covid triple whammy having got covid in hospital, me and my gran are having to isolate incase she gave us covid,, so thanks for giving me so much distraction with these past 2 episodes and the 4 hour bonus episode 🥰

[@foursix32]

Stay strong, internet person💪

[@magnusyarbrough5527]

nice name

[@OpreRoma]

Ty both of you

[@MazHem]

[@ken-dog]

Hey man, hope things have been better since this comment.

[@ebolapie]

well I guess I didn’t have to do anything else in the next 2 hours

[@soniab78]

I would like to thank Alice for asking what spalling is. I of course, also knew what it meant, but was concerned that others listening wouldn't. So big thanks to her.

[@curiousteddie]

dunno why the lyrics to rolling down to old maui are just chilling in the video description but it sure feels right the efficiency of this intro is distressing though

[@km5405]

thats why you need a explosion proof fridge for your terbutyl-lithium

[@henrycurtis3652]

or just not shipping it by truck-on-a-train across the english channel maybe

[@eddieleslie694]

SNCF ran a Steam Loco into the tunnel in 1996 to test the smoke alarm systems of the tunnel

[@themroc8231]

A story I like about the Channel and Franco-Briton relations: In 1804 in the little french town of Wimille, close to Boulogne-sur-mer, they built a 54 meters column in front of the Channel with a statue of Napoleon dressed as an emperor on top, with his back turned on England, the land he couldn't conquer. Fast forward to WWII and the little town was on the route of the RAF pilots flying towards their raids over Europe. The RAF guys, who were more facetious than we give them credit for, figured it was good practice to test their machine guns at some point on their way to battle, and even better practice to unload some unnecessary weight on their way back before the crossing. So for that purpose they figured the Napoleon statue was as good a target as any. When the war ended the statue was so fucked up that De Gaulle had it replaced with a new one, only this time dressed as a corporal because of France being a republic and all that.

[@rubenthiel1214]

another good example of a tunnel with an artificial island is the one between Sweden and Denmark, where the swedish bridge transitions into the danish tunnel, connecting the two nations. Fittingly denmark and sweden are former national rivals similarly to France and Britain.

[@Monothefox]

Speking of Waterslide of Death: how about an episode on Action Point, NJ?

[@tompain9735]

This is a podcast for engineering disasters, not runaway successes.

[@MrCzechTexan]

Absolutely zero engineering went into the construction of that park... which would make it a PERFECT episode lol

[@tompain9735]

@@MrCzechTexan but what if it was engineered to cause pain?

[@ExperimentIV]

oh traction park. just watch the defunctland episode on it tbh. not really a massive engineering disaster. yeah, people died, but it's not like tunnel fire levels of engineering disaster there's also an HBO documentary on it now

[@Legault397]

They even had a Transmobile there, it's perfect for this podcast

[@floatingstudio6363]

If one train pushes the air via the piston rami-thingis into the other tunnel...this is actually an Atmospheric Railway. One train pushes the other and vice versa. Great engineering!

[@TylerMcHenry]

56:04 So their first reaction to the cargo train being on fire was *literally* "I'm sending in more trains!"

[@ExperimentIV]

i was like "why is having multilingual signs but only with english and french weird to these people thats just like everywhere" and then i remembered i live in canada and la loi sur les langues officielles and le bilinguisme officiel au canada are things

[@vaska00762]

Re: Taking the Eurostar - it's one hell of an experience that's just unlike any other rail experience, from the 320km/h segments along the LGV to the 20 minute time in the tunnel itself. It's just cool through and through. In, 2017, I took a rail journey from Berlin to London Gatwick taking the ICE from Berlin to Cologne, then a faster ICE from Cologne to Brussels and then the Eurostar to St. Pancras before finally taking the Thameslink to Gatwick in order to get a flight to Belfast. The Eurostar was also a nostalgia trip for me, as the De Dietrich rolling stock was in its original interior design. The Belfast-Dublin Enterprise train service used Eurostar spec interior design until 2014 when it was refurbished into a generic modern interior. Seeing the Eurostar interior felt like going back to the 2000s with the same furnishings and luggage racks.

[@robertyoung4275]

Question for the room: where did the British media obsession with reducing everything to a portmanteau (ie, "Chunnel") come from?

[@Yora21]

The Americans do three letter initialisms. The Germans string together first syllables. And the British get their Brexit Chunnel.

[@sundayturks]

Probably because of our dogshit papers needing alarmist headlines to bark out, I guess?

[@Jacob-Day]

Because UK English is not a real language

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

I suspect it's because it's convenient for writing short tabloid headlines. CHUNNEL TRAIN BLAZE SHOCK

[@sundayturks]

@@HeadsFullOfEyeballs When the claims of the French invading through it were mentioned my brain immediately went to a spinning headline reading FROG-MARCH DOWN CHUNNEL

[@henrycurtis3652]

Also episode suggestion: the Corvus, the bigass hook-bridge-thing the Romans tried out in the Second? Punic War to be able to board Carthaginian ships but instead basically just sank a bunch of ships

[@jamespocelinko104]

"Nobody died" Ah, so it's going to be one of THOSE episodes.

[@willklemm509]

The odd designation of a "semi" as something else reminds me of my work where we have CMUs and i found out that's the fancy acronym for a cinder block

[@finian3288]

Surprised to see another video so quickly, good job, always great to get another episode of my favourite podcast

[@memomorph5375]

Another episode? Thanks so much! Maggie Thatcher’s grave is a gender neutral bathroom lol

[@Bisquick]

There is no alternative!

[@kjj26k]

Hello, does your pfp reference a particular event?

[@Yora21]

About DB Schenker: German passenger trains are supposed to be in a bad state because when Deutsche Bahn was privizatized, investors really just wanted the cargo service. But they would only get it if they buy the passenger service as well. So they did, but they never wanted it, prioritized cargo, and now passenger service sucks.

[@splittin2atoms]

That does not explain why DB Schenker is priotizing their road cargo operations by a lot. www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/deutsche-bahn-gueter-rollen-bei-db-schenker-auf-der-strasse-statt-auf-der-schiene-a-1264589.html

[@Daneelro]

That's a very imprecise account. DB was never truly privatized, it is a corporation (to be precise, now a group of corporations) 100% owned by the German federal state. Back when it was turned into a corporation, the idea was to bring it to the stock market one day, but that never happened due to its enduring financial problems. DB is generally in a bad shape due to bad management and underinvestment (to be precise, inefficient investment where what's spent is overpriced while a lot of stuff is saved on). When DB was turned into a corporation some 27 years ago, it also got managers from outside the rail industry who were supposed to put it in shape. Worse, all the managers since have been like that (the nowadays most infamous, Hartmut Mehdorn who 'ruled' from 1999 to 2009, was only the third, and IMHO people forget that the first two were just as bad if not worse). Problem was, these managers had absolutely no clue about the complexity of a railway, and sought to save money at all the wrong places while expecting profit gains at the wrong places. This damaged all branches of the company, but the part that became least profitable was just the cargo branch (I don't remember the cargo branch ever being considered the most attractive). Here they eliminated wagonload traffic, most industrial track connections, and a lot of sidings on mainlines that made these lines more prone to cascading delays, especially for freight trains. As for long-distance trains, they built a hodge-podge of high-speed line sections with too many bottlenecks in-between and slimmed-down high-speed trains, sold tickets with a high price, achieving much fewer passengers than the French TGV system, while they viewed classic long-distance trains as pesky competition for the high-speed trains and eliminated most of them. As for local passenger services, these are maintained with public subsidies, but as bad as DB was, new private competitors which took market share in the new franchising model were worse.

[@Max._Power]

you know what's really great for people driving through a tunnel for 23 minutes with no real reference points and the whole tunnel looks the same the whole way, a long spiraling section where they have to hold the steering wheel over while descending and watching the same banked turn for a good 10 minutes at probably at least 70km/h (although the plan says 96 and to maintain that people would need to take the spiral at 96km/h). I can't think of any accidents that may occur from having such a confusing piece of infrastructure operating at high speeds with multiple directional lanes.

[@GarethDennisTV]

RELIEF DUCTS.

[@baileywright1656]

I've taken the VIA from Montreal to Halifax and it was awesome. We had a bunk that had its own shower. It was great! I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys trains or hates cars.

[@dirkdieters5773]

11:00 WTYP needs a bardcore theme song now.

[@henrycurtis3652]

Shake Handes Vvith Daengyr

[@NixodCreations]

This whole disaster sounds exactly like the plot of a Thunderbirds episode

[@JosephJamesScott]

What are you talking about no rest rooms in Newfoundland? There's kilometre after kilometre of rest rooms, anywhere there's no moose fences basically. It's only when you hit civilization that you have to look for actual restrooms.

[@prjndigo]

06:40 Cuba was using microwave transceiver installation equipment to intermittently broadcast into the rooms of the diplomats, they weren't intending to make them sick just very uncomfortable. Turns out such a thing causes an increase in metallic toxicity in the blood.

[@km5405]

now i wonder where they got that idea?

[@deeznoots6241]

Based cubans

[@mor4y]

This isn't new either, it's been reported in Cuba specifically for about 6 years, with occasional appearances around the world. People also used to laugh about a Russian "blinding gun", right up until a US or UK helicopter got hit with one while cameras were rolling, some kind of intense laser pulse that blinded the pilot for a few hours completely, and took several days for him to recover to some kind of normal.

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

Keep in mind that there's no actual evidence of any of this, and that to our knowledge no-one has ever managed to build a microwave device that works the way it would need to in order to cause the symptoms described by the embassy people. So this would have to be some secret high-tech Cuban superweapon thing.

[@Meatloaf_TV]

Love how roz says 5 am in the morning

[@1121494]

1:50:33 Looking forward to the upcoming Tacoma Narrows Bridge Episode!

[@Hotrob_J]

Via rail ran a campaign called "why not take the train", the conceit of which is that the only reason people didn't take the train was because they never thought of it. Montréal to Halifax by air is an hour to maybe an hour and a half by plane, with a $600 round trip ticket (give or take). The train is indeed about 22 hours for that same route, and usually more expensive. It's only a 14 hour drive from Montreal to Halifax. The train is absurdly slow.

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

I mean, the train being slower than driving isn't always an issue. It's bad if you're in a hurry, sure, but unlike time spent driving -- which is basically lost -- you can _do_ stuff on a train. Or just sleep. I've gotten a lot of work done on the train.

[@Hotrob_J]

@@HeadsFullOfEyeballs this is very true, but on the other hand with a car you have a car when you get to your destination

[@cortanathelawless1848]

The Americas would be so perfect for high speed train. Like with your population density you can build straight rails for hundreds of kilometres. Just imagine having trains there almost as fast as a plane .

[@davidlathrop9360]

What kindness did I do to someone to be worthy of getting a new WTYP so quickly?

[@TrashHeapCustodian]

Hidden Alice Talent: good at many accents

[@CykoruKun]

What the fuck, I thought I had 8 more days for episode 51. Now I have a backlog again. Damn podcasters.

[@AmurTiger]

Just at a minimum the Anglo-French union would have prevented the disaster that was Mers el Kabir which was stupid and destructive enough to earn a WTYP episode if not for Drach already having done an excellent job.

[@storeswallah]

"An Alabama man tased himself in the Rotunda today..."

[@ViolentOrchid]

Is this how they discovered the Le Car explodes into flames when bumped into slightly? And isn't this the second tunnel fire involving France?

[@laxboy332]

I was prepared to wait another 2 weeks for an episode, this is awesome

[@whym6438]

11:20 If we're going to be pedantic, France was pronounced "frahn-tsuh" in Old French.

[@rednaxelA11]

HONK IF THATCHER'S DEAD.

[@DeadWhiteButterflies]

If you're looking for good headphones, I'd recommend either the Beyerdynamic DT770 or Sennheiser 450BT. Both really good cans. DT's are used by all my musician friends, and I actually use the 450BT's for when I'm out walking because have noise cancelling built in. Big bluetooth range on them too. I can leave my phone upstairs with them on and still keep listening to you guys while I'm making lunch. Been a great set.

[@WaterMan416]

My musician friend recommended the DT770 as well, and I just got them in the mail yesterday. Can confirm, great headphones. I haven't listened to music this rich in a long time, and it gave me chills at first.

[@40below1000]

You mention the Eurostar. Haven't thought about them in decades. I live in Canada, and the asses who ran VIA in the early 2000s bought a few and planned to buy more, the intiial buy was $4-6 million (it's been many years but I was all over this when it happened because I was a newspaper reporter who hated VIA and we had a lot more free time before Twitter. ) But they were a mess, the doors froze closed in the Ottawa winter, they were too light to plough through drifts and ice, they were cold and drafty and most damningly, they were BARELY handicapped accessible for North American-sized wheeelchair users. What ultimately got them pulled from service, besides me being a vindictive areshole, was when the Canadian Transportation Association rejected the rolling stock because the damn wheelchair tiedowns and the bathrooms were horned into the carriage's crumple zone. That turned out to be a HUGE problem for VIA, seeing as how they are federally regulated transportation and stuff. It was the Council of Canadians with Disabilities that took them to court over it. It's been 20+ years but the decision on those trains should still be findable. Maybe some media coverage from back in the day too... EDIT TO ADD Best quote: on the Eurostar washrooms of death: ""if you're sitting on the can and the accident occurs, you're a goner," www.blindcanadians.ca/publications/cbm/15/asked-answers-access-disabled-safety-new-rail-cars-called-question-washrooms-cru

[@civishamburgum1234]

Of course one can drive a steam train through the tunnel. One just needs scuba gear.

[@AutumnBosco]

I am riding on a TGV train from Avignon to Paris right now. Currently we are north of Lyon going near max speed, and as you said "Woosh woosh woosh" at 41:05, a OUIGO train passed ours in the opposite direction and made those same whoosh sounds. As soon as you stopped saying the whooshes was nearly perfectly timed with when the train has finished passing us.

[@DoubleThinkTwice]

I feel like I'm getting edged so hard for that Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster. That's gonna be a 10 hour long delight to listen to

[@epicgamer2727]

As someone who is stuck at home with COVID thanks for all the content recently.

[@boydsinclair7606]

Anyone wondering why the New Zealand train gauge and truck arrangement is strange: We're very hilly and mountainous, think lots of curves and spirals, we don't have much in the way of straight lines 😅 🗻🚞🗻

[@melissametivier4]

WHAT?!?!!? Ep 52 already?!? I am giddy with excitement. GIDDY!!!

[@jizburg]

Okay. Being underground, Under a sea and on fire is probably the worst thing i can imagine.

[@Fox-419]

two episodes in one week? yall are the best thankyou!!

[@colonelgraff9198]

The last time I was this early Justin blamed Mothman.

[@nathaniellindner313]

Well, in this case it was the fault of Homme Papillon de Nuit.

[@jamiekamihachi3135]

Whatever happened to the Mothman meme. Also there’s another idea for merch, “This is a pro-Mothman podcast.”

[@Full_Otto_Bismarck]

@@jamiekamihachi3135 only OGs remember mothman

[@Raptor747]

I'm so glad you guys know (and use) speedrunning terminology.

[@rubenthiel1214]

I genuinely thought that I was hallucinating this notification what great conjunction caused this to occur?!

[@henrycurtis3652]

it popped up like 2/3 of the way through when I was watching the last episode and same

[@Bakamoichigei]

50:00 No, no, no, wait... Like in-flight refueling, but...the probe pierces the fuselage, and _injects the cabin full of the safety foam from the cars in Demolition Man._ 🤣

[@danielkorladis7869]

1:21:34 I mean firefighters aren't known for being easily fazed by danger. Maybe the possibility had occurred to them and they were just like "eh, occupational hazard."

[@Yora21]

I looked it up: They do have little golf cart fire trucks! Search for Channel Tunnel STTS.