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Gelenktriebwagen!
Forget Fahrvergnügen.
That word was about “the pleasure of driving.” It spoke to that part of our hearts where one American dream met another, the one about the freedom of the road.
Well, Fahrvergnügen fell out of common parlance around here just about the same time that the freedom of Route 29 came to mean forty minutes to claim, oh, maybe four-point-five miles of roadway real estate, at seven-fifty-five in the morning and five-fifty-five in the evening. A twice-daily exercise now brought to us at $3.63 an idling gallon.
The word for us now, here, as we learned it last night at the Columbia Bar and Grill, is Gelenktriebwagen.
That’s “articulated railcar” to you and me, and, abbreviated as “GTW,” it’s part of the model name of the only piece of self-propelled light-rail diesel rolling stock that can make the grade (so to speak) for any feasible north-south passenger rail line from Phoenixville to Paoli. It’s listed as the Stadler Rail AG GTW 2/6, and it’s manufactured in Bussnang, Switzerland.
So reported Tom Hickey, national transit planning manager for Gannett Fleming, the engineering and planning consultants hired by the Main Street-Community Development Corporation to explore the line’s feasibility. He so said at last night’s session of Citizens for the Train at the Columbia.
What will connect the residential population center that is Phoenixville with employment centers that are in Great Valley and south, thence east and west, a connector that that is not Rt. 29? Gelenktriebwagen! What will, at the same time, connect Phoenixville once again to Oaks by rail and thence, perhaps, to biomedical research and pharma production to the north? Gelenktriebwagen!
There are big issues to face, everyone connected with Hickey's study was quick to note. CDC board member Manny DeMutis called the twelve-week feasibility study only the project's first "baby-step." There are negotiations with Norfolk Southern for acquisition of its discontinued Phoenixville Line. There’s figuring out the detailed engineering of a topographically challenging route from Devault to Paoli. There’s a market study to undertake, some $250-275,000 worth, to see what ridership might really look like. There is a new right-of-way to piece together through commercial areas at the route's southern end. There’s how to handle design, construction and rolling stock costs totaling an estimated $140,000,000, or $15,000,000 a mile.
At the vote by Citizens for the Train to proceed with the project, Barry Cassidy asked for yeas and nays. The 'yeas' amounted to a vote by near acclamation, but Mary Foote's vote was misheard. "You're a 'no'?" Cassidy asked. "No," Foote said. "I said GO!" Gelenktriebwagen!
The word is a five-syllable statement of faith.
Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence
That word was about “the pleasure of driving.” It spoke to that part of our hearts where one American dream met another, the one about the freedom of the road.
Well, Fahrvergnügen fell out of common parlance around here just about the same time that the freedom of Route 29 came to mean forty minutes to claim, oh, maybe four-point-five miles of roadway real estate, at seven-fifty-five in the morning and five-fifty-five in the evening. A twice-daily exercise now brought to us at $3.63 an idling gallon.
The word for us now, here, as we learned it last night at the Columbia Bar and Grill, is Gelenktriebwagen.
That’s “articulated railcar” to you and me, and, abbreviated as “GTW,” it’s part of the model name of the only piece of self-propelled light-rail diesel rolling stock that can make the grade (so to speak) for any feasible north-south passenger rail line from Phoenixville to Paoli. It’s listed as the Stadler Rail AG GTW 2/6, and it’s manufactured in Bussnang, Switzerland.
So reported Tom Hickey, national transit planning manager for Gannett Fleming, the engineering and planning consultants hired by the Main Street-Community Development Corporation to explore the line’s feasibility. He so said at last night’s session of Citizens for the Train at the Columbia.
What will connect the residential population center that is Phoenixville with employment centers that are in Great Valley and south, thence east and west, a connector that that is not Rt. 29? Gelenktriebwagen! What will, at the same time, connect Phoenixville once again to Oaks by rail and thence, perhaps, to biomedical research and pharma production to the north? Gelenktriebwagen!
There are big issues to face, everyone connected with Hickey's study was quick to note. CDC board member Manny DeMutis called the twelve-week feasibility study only the project's first "baby-step." There are negotiations with Norfolk Southern for acquisition of its discontinued Phoenixville Line. There’s figuring out the detailed engineering of a topographically challenging route from Devault to Paoli. There’s a market study to undertake, some $250-275,000 worth, to see what ridership might really look like. There is a new right-of-way to piece together through commercial areas at the route's southern end. There’s how to handle design, construction and rolling stock costs totaling an estimated $140,000,000, or $15,000,000 a mile.
At the vote by Citizens for the Train to proceed with the project, Barry Cassidy asked for yeas and nays. The 'yeas' amounted to a vote by near acclamation, but Mary Foote's vote was misheard. "You're a 'no'?" Cassidy asked. "No," Foote said. "I said GO!" Gelenktriebwagen!
The word is a five-syllable statement of faith.
Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence
posted by The Phoenix Files at
9:44 AM
2 Comments:
Skippy should forget trying to push German, he has a hard enough time with English.
Oh, Dick, stop....
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