The featured image at the head of the linked article shows one of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) locomotives and its passenger train on the existing network in Kenya.

NilePost reported on 19th February 2026 that Uganda is fast-tracking final financing for the Malaba–Kampala Standard Gauge Railway, with talks underway with the Islamic Development Bank to unlock 13 trillion UgX. The project promises faster, cheaper cargo transport and stronger regional trade links!

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2026/02/21/february-2026-kenya-and-uganda-railways-latest-news/

Australia is home to around 22 million people which is roughly the same number as live in the Greater London region. The majority of our thinly-scattered population lives on or very close to the eastern coast and most then are in the major State Capital cities. Of those Sydney has the largest population and the largest rail network. Melbourne is very close behind in population and potentially set to overtake within 10 - 15 years; it also has a reasonable suburban operation and is famed for having the largest tramway network in, depending upon your source, the Western World, the English-speaking World or the entire World. Brisbane and Perth fall into the next smaller size category and each has a suburban rail operation, that of Brisbane being almost comparable for size with Melbourne. Adelaide has a modest local network and alone among our Capitals it is not electrified. Canberra, our National (Federal) Capital, has the ignominy of being at the end of a single track branch line and would make a decent BLT model and Darwin is at the end of one of the longest and most remote rail routes on the planet. There remains a small freight rail operation in Tasmania though no commercial passenger services.

Victoria is the most densely populated State and has a reasonable regional rail service; New South Wales has some inter-city and regional services and Queensland has the coast line to Cairns with vestigial passenger services running two or three times a week on a few inland routes. There are two infrequent regional services operating out of Perth, to Bunbury and to Kalgoorlie. Aside from the passenger operations there is a plethora of freight routes often with extremely sparse or seasonal services based on traffic type. Queensland is famed for its vast network of sugar cane railways.

There are three main gauges in use. Standard (1435mm to Aussies, or 4' 8 1/2" ) is used throughout New South Wales and is the gauge of the national interstate routes which basically comprises Brisbane - Sydney - Melbourne - Adelaide - Perth and Sydney - Adelaide - Alice Springs - Darwin. Irish Broad Gauge (1600mm or 5' 3") is used by Melbourne and Victorian regional routes in most cases though there is some standard gauge regional freight traffic in the far west. This is also the gauge of the Adelaide suburban system. Narrow (1067mm or 3' 6") gauge is used throughout Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia for intra-state workings though most Queensland sugar cane lines are 2' 0" gauge.

There is a number of enthusiast-oriented web sites of which perhaps the most useful would be:

Railpage Australia at http://www.railpage.com.au/ where the forums will be found to contain discussion, speculation and fact on any topic you can think of. The site has very high traffic and is afflicted in the same way as RMweb currently it with rather frequent server overload outages. If it is offline come back a day or so later and try again.

John Cleverdon's Locopage, hosted by Railpage servers and at http://locopage.railpage.org.au/ (note that .org in this url is correct as this links to a different server to the main .com site) which contains extensive listings and technical details, not to mention images, of Australian locomotives. There is a downloadable database attached to the site which allows you to keep regularly updated.

The various suburban and regional multiple unit operations are not dealt with at Locopage. As there is a rather smaller railfan community in Australia than some other countries it can be harder to obtain up to date information on the suburban electric and diesel fleets. One excellent source for Victorian operations, and which includes comprehensive details of the trams in Melbourne as well, is http://www.vicsig.net

So ..... onto some prototype images of my own:-

A sight which may now be unique to Melbourne is the tram : train crossing square. Here we see a Z2 class tram crossing the triple rail tracks at Glenhuntly. Trams run on standard gauge track at 600V dc while trains here are on broad gauge at 1500V dc. At each of the four locations (the others are Kooyong, Gardiner and Riversdale) where this spectacle may be seen there is a control cabin. The controller switches the voltage as required.

Many Australian rail lines are unfenced including through suburbia. Here we see an example as a Comeng-built Melbourne suburban train travels beside residential streets near Ormond.

Moving north to Brisbane, at the main Roma Street station, we see the driver of an InterCity emu set wearing the regulation shorts in tropical heat as he checks he is clear to leave with a train for sugar-cane country to the north. These trains operate on 25kV ac as Brisbane electrified later than the southern cities and took advantage of more recent technology. The extensive use of painted corrugated tin for roofing and shelters is also a typical Australian feature.

Getting the message across Queensland Rail-style

In far north Queensland we see a 2360-class diesel electric waiting time at the new Townsville station with a southbound "Sunlander" working from Cairns to Brisbane; this train would at that time have been electrically-hauled south of Rockhampton by a 3900-class.

Standard gauge freight on a dual-gauge line; 81-class 8173 and a GL-class loco wait for the all-clear to cross Footscray Road beneath the Tullamarine Freeway in Melbourne and enter the docks complex. The 81 is in a now-defunct livery of NSW State Rail, the GL just shows its more recent CFCLA (Chicago Freight Car Leasing Australia) livery alluding to the open access regime now in force.

NR-class locomotive NR75 stands at Alice Springs station with the southbound "Ghan" tourist train. The loco was named "Steve Irwin" at the time but was renamed following the sad demise of one of our iconic personalities. This is the only regular passenger operation on the Adelaide - Darwin route running once or twice each week. The loco is one of the 119 remaining (of 120 built) in the class which are used mostly on heavy interstate freight often with two, three or more locomotives in a "lash-up". Their use on passenger trains is confined to this, the Indian Pacific (Sydney - Perth) and the Overland (Melbourne - Adelaide) none of which operates daily. All are on standard gauge.

Victoria has some diesel-hauled passenger services on regional lines though many are now in the hands of modern Sprinter and V/Locity dmu types. One anachronism was the outer suburban line between Frankston and Stony Point. This continues beyond where electric trains stop to link several outlying towns, a steel plant (which generates two daily freights) and a ferry link to some islands. Until a couple of years ago the train was worked, as shown here, by an A-class loco built in 1952 and a couple of former suburban coaches (one of which is glimpsed in the distance) which were mere youths dating from 1957. The signalling was antique as well! A60 runs round at Frankston.

The service has been modernised and is now worked with new signalling and axle counters replacing electric train staffs, and sprinters are in use such as this one seen north of Melbourne at Heathcote Junction. Steep gradients abound in Australia as can be seen here.

In the New South Wales Hunter Valley you will find Australia's only 4-track main line, between the outskirts of Newcastle and Maitland. Here at the diminutive station of Sandgate, empty and loaded coal trains pass with wagons receding into the distance.

The XPT, an Australian equivalent of the HST, seen at Albury station on a Sydney - Melbourne run.

Moving back north to Brisbane here is one of the unusual Tri-Bo electric locos of which Queensland Rail runs a large number mostly on heavy coal trains in the Blackwater and Goonyella regions. This one is heading a northbound "Sunlander" train at Brisbane Roma Street which will arrive at its destination in Cairns some 30 hours later!

my first question is, I know of sliding doors/side vans but were there other type of non-short cars in friendly numbers too?

and not to be silly about that I may be naive here but, how did these cars ride especially with the flanges against the inside curve of a diverging route of a turnout? did these rigid axles have some kind of play to be able to point a small few degrees to the side?

and to wrap up this question post I give you below a random example from the web of the sort of long 2-axle sliding van I had known a little bit of about in general

If you want busy try this.

Nippori Station (Tokyo)

In the North of Québec, some 300 miles from Montreal, there is an area of extensive mining – deposits of copper, zinc, gold and cobalt wee being mined in the mid-20th century. In the first half of the 21st century, Northern Quebec’s mining sector is a significant part of the province’s economy, focusing on gold, nickel, lithium, graphite, iron, and copper, focusing on gold, nickel, lithium, graphite, iron, and copper, with major operations like Glencore’s Raglan (nickel) and Agnico Eagle‘s Canadian Malartic (gold) leading the way, alongside emerging lithium projects in the James Bay region, leveraging Quebec’s hydropower for cleaner operations and creating jobs in remote areas like Nunavik, despite logistical and environmental challenges. 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2026/02/11/the-1950s-some-railways-in-quebec/

was there any use of hospital cars in some type anywhere that was not for regarding war injuries?  I imagine it was/is a very niche case but I still had to wonder if there were/are any or not?

I won't be too surprised if at least one answer is from some low-density larger country..

The railway from Nice PLM Station to Tende and Cuneo was completed in 1928. It was long in the gestation and in construction. The story stretches back more than a century and a half. ‘Le Chemin de fer du Col de Tende’ is historically a significant local and international line. Its inverted Y-shaped layout and its crossing of international borders means that it is known by a number of different names:

in Nice it is known as the Nice – Coni Line;

generally in Italy it is officially Ferrovia Cuneo Ventimiglia

in the Piedmont city of Cuneo’s economic/political circles, sitting at the top of the inverted ‘Y’, it is often referred to as the Cuneo – Nizza line in recognition of good relations with the community of Nice.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2025/07/22/the-railway-from-nice-to-tende-and-cuneo-part-1

Quote

Its story is a saga of significant technical achievement: gaining 1000 metres in height ; having a dozen tunnels longer than 1 kilometre (including those of the Col de Tende (8098 m), the Col de Braus (5939 m) and the Mont Grazian tunnel (3882 m), which are among the longest structures on the French and Italian networks); having four complete helical loops,  several S-shaped loops and a multitude of bridges and viaducts (some of which, such as those of Scarassouï or Bévéra, are architecturally significant railway structures. Of a total route of 143.5 km, 6.5 km are on bridges or viaducts and over 60 km are in tunnels. This means that close to 42% of the journey along the line(s) is on or within structures.

https://www.bermudarailway.net/then/history/history.html

Also found that the Astor estate had a narrow/minimum gauge railway(for fun). I think gauge is less than 2ft, possibly 15in.

https://www.bermuda-attractions.com/bermuda_0002ca.htm

(its a very long lead-on, if you want to get straight to the point then skip to 3:55 where the 'the flaming problem' finally gets first mention. and I still don't know how one can put a twice-flamed unit back into service only to have it flame up a third time .. AIE AIE AIE!!!!!!!?)

https://www.loco-info.com/view.aspx?id=17861&t=Country

but it appears that technically it was a successful blueprint even if in real life it shortly got "halved and halved" tho?

do anyone indeed recall any section (likely part of a station layout I somewhat can still recall) that could be at one voltage for one train but then say a hour later a different train would come into the same track which by then was already line-energized at the other voltage instead?

was this the only example of its-not-a-tram consist that suspended the coaches on very short 'rigid chassis' otherwise (instead of the common method of two coaches overlap-sharing one articulated bogie/axle .. you easily know what I'm referring to) or were there actually other prototypes of similar nature operated somewhere else too?

[excuse the second photo for being a model but it was the only one that could show a clear view of the really-short body unit itself]

edit: sorry I was a little sleepy I forgot to mention that this is DDR DGBe 12 in this instance

I’m hoping to spend some time in 2026 photographing loco hauled services around Belgium. I know that they are becoming increasingly rare but trying to find solid information on what services they regularly work on is proving tricky.

Does anyone know of any reliable web resources which show this information or have access to any information that could be shared? 
 

Thanks (in anticipation)

Doug

(even then I wonder about that unrelated locomotive at 4:57 as it looks almost like a 'typical' 4-6-2 except the boiler itself is "too short" for the chassis, and look at the cab side..)

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/121466-third-rail-emu-photos/page/128/#findComment-6081193

had me thinking about if only the older sets liked to do that (versus the new 'more sensitive' ones)..and I then realized I perhaps by then had a new non-Britian topic on mind..so here we are

do you know of any instances where the older one did not have as much of the problems that the new ones kept having in general?  for me I can recall of two for now

SNCB (Belgium) had their old 1950-1980's built electric locomotives that were to be retired from passenger duty by new locomotives like in 2010's or so - except that the latter somehow not surprisingly kept having climate-related problems such that the old units had to be put back into the diagrams they were supposed to be already retired from - and I recall that 'Todays Railway: Europe' issue also mentioned that the older units were built of stout steel compared to the plastics on the new one .. funny opinion but perhaps quite honest nevertheless?

and I can't recall if this was northeast USA or rather somewhere in Europe but - not surprisingly I recall someone mentioned about that with the old EMU if the voltage sapped a lot the train just simply dimmed all its lights but kept powering through, whereas the newer EMU would immediately shut down completely cold right there (ouch tho as I imagine the additional delay in "rebooting" the train or worser having to rescue it with something else also didn't make the busy dispatcher any happy about them)

here you go

https://www.loco-info.com/view.aspx?id=17408&t=Country

the fact that a sizeable number of these were built, and kept in operation for quite an awhile says something about how effective the blueprint was nevertheless

https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/1oc768l/a_100_year_old_ge_steeplecab_still_operating_in/

Outward appearance is of a GE 403 50 ton Steeplecab, but it doesn't appear in Joe Strapac's comprehensive book on the subject. The roof chop is obvious (it looks a lot lower but in reality is only about 18"), but less so is it appears to be a mirror image- other photos in the article confirm the images haven't been reversed and it was built as left hand drive so the cab doors are on the opposite corners and the brake cylinder and bracket are reversed. 

I'm still trying to find the history of it, but suspect it was built in Japan by Shibaura as they started a partnership with GE in 1910. As homebuilt and third party locos go when compared to others that operated in Japan it is very accurate to the original, and probably uses imported pilots, trucks and fittings. 

I've had a quick go at chopping my own drawing of a 404 Erie built Steeplecab but really need more info to finalise the smaller details, but building one in HO shouldn't be a problem:

Copying in @tetsudofan in case he knows any more about GE Steeplecabs built in Japan and @TEAMYAKIMAbecause it's China and the master drawing is based on Yakima Valley 298 (although that's a different Yakima Railroad from the one that his moniker is based upon).

Aalborg yesterday. 
 

Midtjvske Jernbaner’s MX26  ‘Tørfisken’ 92 82 7604 26-6. ex DSB MX 1025. Trundles gently away from the newly laid track in the bay platform at Aalborg.
 

Amazingly that is a public footpath from the station, with two members of the public being treated as grown up adults by walking beside the track, which is open to traffic. Can you imagine the outcry in the UK. 

Later in the afternoon…

‘Tørfisken’ heading down the branch to Aalborg Øst with a regular working of various vans.

A rake of ex DSB ballast wagons, with a Viking Rail ex CFL loco on the head end, being used in engineering works in the North Jutland area.

Various heritage DSB wagons in the museum area.