Vex Appeal is a weblog and collection of projects by Guy Parsons, a game designer, online community and digital strategy dude in London, England. Read more about the saucy butcher boy here.
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"Love Is Like A Bottle Of Gin..." Links for FAME people They Tell Stories Ffffudging it slightly On having a rank Bunny People will see me and cry Let's all go fly a kite One Word Garfield minus garfield
Train of thought
Thursday, March 13, 2008
So about three or four years ago, Alex and Matt and myself got this train back from a party. That was quite weird in itself, because the journey took about 50% less time than it should have with no obvious explanation why. Anyway, when we disembarked we saw one of these on the platform opposite:
(image from this site)
So basically it's a weird big black boxy thing with no passenger joiny-up-bit to the next carriage along with blinding white light streaming out from this thin seam that spilts it down the middle.
Basically, we stood there for ages going "whoa... what is it?" It looks a bit like a train engine from an alternate nuclear-powered reality:
"Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years." -- Alex Lewyt in the New York Times, 1955Many times since then have we referenced in passing our vision of witnessing what no ordinary civillian ought to have laid eyes upon. Imagine my surprise when I got off the train the other day and saw it for an unprecedented second time. This time lots of other commuters noticed it too and as they walked past did a little back-and-forth shimmy as they reached the bit with the light coming out.
Anyway, this time I remembered what the code on the side said and it turned out that actually it's a thing you can drive along the track and it uses the light to sense how close other stuff (trees, the side of tunnels, etc) is to it. Then you can compare the data to the last time you did it and see if anything is getting within DANGER distance.
So, an enigma solved after three years, but I have to confess I'm a bit disappointed that it's not a government black-ops operation transporting volatile batches of Kryptonite across the country, bathed in the glow of Chekov Radiation.
Still, Alex and Matt seem pleased:
Labels: i am technically a trainspotter now, mystery, nuclear, train
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spugmeistress said... -
have you read (or watched the recent bbc adaptation starring Billie Piper) Phillip Pullman's Shadow in the North? reminded me somewhat of that, although, fortunately, far less sinister.
- 6:18 PM
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vpisteve said...
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Wow. I totally thought this was a screenshot from Half-Life 2.
- 1:07 AM