This image bugs me. It has always bugged me. So I want to know: could Sodor send Thomas to space and if so, how much would it cost? Since Sodor is modelled on the Isle of Man, I figured I can have some fun here.

The GDP of the island, the train and fuel, and then its cost will all be discussed here. I am not an economist nor a rocket scientist, so just enjoy this chost and get in the comments if you have a better answer.

Figuring out Sodor’s GDP

This is important since we want to know if the economy of the island could pull it off.

The population of Sodor is suggested to be about 60,000. The Isle of Man is estimated to be around 81,000, which makes Sodor 74% of its population size.

We don’t have any details from Sodor about its economy, but it certainly has more railways than Isle of Man, which has only one and it is just a tourist steam line. I feel comfortable with just US$5.54 billion being Sodor’s annual GDP since it’s 74% that of the Isle of Man’s.

Interestingly enough, the real world Isle has been home to a few private space ventures.

Physical details on Thomas the Tank Engine

This wasn’t too hard to figure out as it turns out to be a LB&SCR E2 class engine built in England between 1913 and 1916.

Why this is important is pretty simple: we need to know how much he would weigh and how much water is required to allow him to function.

As it stands, its dry weight is 53,600 kg. However, it also has to carry water, and its capacity there is 5,710 litres. Water is great since with the metric system we can immediately covert those litres into kilograms by switching the units, making the whole weight of the train sans coal 59,310 kg.

The coal part is tricky. Steam locomotives traditionally used anthracite coal, which weighs about 1.5 g per cm^3. This information is otherwise useless to me because I have no idea how much coal Thomas requires in order to function.

However, I lucked out and found a diagram of the train and it specifies 2.5 imperial tons of coal! That is an additional 2,540 kg, for a grand total of 61,850 kilograms for a fully-functional Thomas the Tank Engine.

Can a rocket send that much mass to space?

This is where the situation starts to get a bit dire: the best we’re going to do today is low-earth orbit.

Most modern rockets are in the range of a few thousand kilograms and as we increase the mass of the payload, the shorter the distance we’re able to travel. Getting off the ground is expensive-fuel wise as we have to fight the gravitational forces that our planet forces on us.

However, if we’re satisfied with low-earth orbit and just being a satellite or possibly docking with the International Space Station, the Falcon Heavy rocket is capable of lifting 63,900 kg to around that height, meaning we’re just about 2,000 kg under its maximum payload capacity.

So how much will this cost Sodor?

SpaceX claims that it will cost about US$1,200 per kilogram to send something to space on its Falcon Heavy–it is also the cheapest out of any competitor government or private.

At 61,850 kg, that translates to US$74.2 million to just lift Thomas up into orbit. This of course does not take into account the cost to prepare Thomas nor transporting him across the Atlantic to a launch site, but it’s a base cost. I’d pad this to US$100 million to just consider all the nonsense required to make this happen.

Going back to Sodor’s GDP, this means that 2% of the island’s economic output would be devoted to this stunt. To compare this back to Isle of Man, this would be on par with their entire tourist sector.

So it’s possible to send Thomas to space then?

It’s doable, but it would be a rather weird stunt. I have no idea how he’d get back.

Okay. So I have a really weird thing I really love and that is arbutus trees. They’re absolutely my favourite tree in the world and I am fortunate to have quite a few within a reasonable distance from where I live.

You can find them commonly on the southern coasts of British Columbia, but they have been known to extend all the way down to northern California. You generally only find them near beaches and they prefer to be exposed and in areas with little to no water. This is why when you do encounter them you tend to be on steep hills or cliffs as opposed to flat land. They grow rather tall and can reach as high as 30 metres.

As a consequence, having one of your own in a yard is not practical. Additionally, they are terrible for making anything out of as the wood tends to grow quite crookedly due to the nature of the environments it is found in. Growing them in the city is difficult as evident by this Vancouver tree census data, there are only 9 of them on public property.

In any event, for my birthday this year, I made a point to book a place near where the trees could be found since they make me so happy. I hope that this share made you happy too!

My favourite video game of all time is Chrono Trigger. I literally cannot express enough how much I love this game, its music, and its story. I have had friends get me copies of this game when travelling and it is at this point I am now just short of one final copy: the EU DS release.

I figured I’d write about my thoughts about each type of release and then tell you the version I think you should play.

PlayStation

The release of Chrono Trigger for PlayStation is weird. SquareSoft decided to use the original SNES binary of the game to provide things like graphics and text, but then added FMV and audio separate–the audio part makes sense when you think about it anyway.

However, this decision to use the SNES ROM made the game run so freaking slow. Its disc read times are abysmal and really ruins the experience if you ignore the beautiful Akira Toriyama-derived animation cuts.

The North American release happened twice on that note. Sony really loves to do “greatest hits” releases and this version is no exception. However, they really messed with the artwork in the game case as evident here.

They just shifted the whole art to the right to put the hideous green label. I know that this is just a game case, but come on.

I don’t recommend making this your solo experience with this game.

Super Nintendo / Super Famicom

This is the original version and it plays as you expect it. Honestly, if this is to be your only experience with the game, it is actually great. If you decide to speedrun it, this is the only version you should bother with.

The catch with this release is the North American version is super expensive. I was lucky in that I was able to get a copy from a friend on the cheap without a game box. I ended up buying a replica box since I don’t really care about having the originals.

The Japanese version is dirt cheap however.

Nintendo DS

Okay. So hear me out: this version is probably the best to get especially if you want to buy it at an affordable price, have reasonable load times (it includes the FMV), and for the bonus extra ending that doesn’t exist in the other physical releases.

The downside of the DS release in my opinion is that it plays slightly differently due to the second screen. It doesn’t really change the gameplay, but I always felt like the experience was better on a solo display.

The bonus ending I will avoid elaborating too much on, but it does a good job intertwining the game with its sequel, Chrono Cross.

So what is the best version?

The Nintendo DS is the best version if you want a bonus ending and want a copy on the cheap.

The SNES version is the best if you want the original experience.

Choose your poison, but either way enjoy the ride!

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Light rail vehicle parked at a rail yard in New Westminster (City of Vancouver Archives)

When Vancouver dismantled its interurban railway network in the 1950s, it wasn’t long until local officials and the provincial government began to discuss options to recreate it in the form of a rapid transit.

In the 1970s, constant traffic problems and the oil crisis spurred the provincial government to start serious proposals for what would become the region’s rail system.

Proposed rapid transit routes from the 1970s (University of British Columbia Archives)

The above map isn’t too dissimilar to what we have today (Hastings and North Shore do not have rail as of today), but the government’s idea was to quickly revive the old BC Electric Railway by strong-arming it into existence.

And how do you force a railway to exist? By of course buying a Siemens vehicle from what was then West Germany to demonstrate the proposal along the Central Park BCER line (which is now the Expo Line).

However, in 1976, a succeeding government who didn’t like the purchase but had to receive it anyway opted to keep the train in storage. It languished in a rail yard in New Westminster until 1987 when it sold it to a group in Edmonton for a loonie. At some point in the last decade, it was returned to its native Germany where it now resides in a museum.

Public meeting announcement for rapid transit (City of Vancouver Archives)

Interestingly, the government also had purchased back two former-BCER interurban vehicles from owners in Washington state. These two vehicles are still in Metro Vancouver with one residing in Steveston and the other in Cloverdale.

It wasn’t the first time LRT was proposed nor the last. Almost every planned LRT implementation in Metro Vancouver has turned into some sort of light metro. There is this desire to replicate the Edmonton LRT or Calgary C-Train for some reason.

Perhaps when the City of Vancouver finally implements its street car network we’ll finally have such trains in use in the region once again?

This originally appeared on cohost.org/VancouverTransit but has been moved here due to the site’s shutdown.

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Remnants of an overpass at Boundary and Vanness

In today’s modern Vancouver, the section between Joyce-Collingwood and Patterson stations on the Expo Line is often seen as a relatively sleepy area with access to a large park, a corporate office for a major employer, and a connection to one of the Rapidbuses.

However, if you have a keen eye and opt to walk along the route, you might stumble across some interesting history that makes this stretch of the SkyTrain network rather peculiar due to it having one of the few BC Electric Railway overpasses still left standing directly underneath.

Remnants of an overpass near Kingsway and Sandell on Smith

Situated between Kingsway and Sandell on Smith, you’ll find this interesting little structure that is very much out of place and is towered over by the railway overhead. Today, it acts as an underpass for access to the office building on the other side, but beyond that it doesn’t have much of a purpose today. It likely still stands as there is a gas line which intersects underneath.

Overpass as it appeared in the 1980s at Boundary and Vanness (City of Vancouver Archives)

However, until sometime in the 1990s, there was another overpass just 100 metres to the west at the intersection of Boundary and Vanness, which remained even after the Expo Line had opened. It was to serve the industrial complex which eventually became the various apartment and condominium buildings we know Joyce-Collingwood for.

This likely resulted in a lack of need for the railway overpass to continue existing. For the most part it is now gone and now Boundary Road is now six lanes as opposed to four and it is still an uncomfortable connection for cyclists who wish to continue on the BC Parkway, which follows most of the Expo Line.

That last part is a bit of a thorn in my side as the overpass could have served a use for cyclists who wanted to avoid having to make an awkward connection to the path on the Burnaby side. Aside from that, the whole overpass itself has some interesting history and could have been a station if BC Transit had its way in the 1980s.

Map showing the Central Park line (City of Vancouver Archives)

Two stations on the above map do exist on the modern Expo Line: Patterson and Collingwood East, which is now Joyce-Collingwood. However, one other station on here labelled as Park Ave could have existed as it was a station under consideration when planning for the Expo Line.

View of what is now Boundary and Vanness in the 1940s (City of Vancouver Archives)

Park Ave was really what we today call Boundary Road and its station was situated directly behind what is now one of TELUS’ corporate office. As you can see in the above photo, the overpass is very much the same design as the one I paid a visit to.

BC Transit planners were seriously considering a station called Boundary in that same spot. BCTel (who was gobbled up by TELUS in the late 1990s) was the province’s largest employer at the time and the government was keen to provide the office workers with access.

Why it never got built is unknown to me, but I imagine since the distance between Patterson and Joyce-Collingwood isn’t terribly long that they opted to not bother. As it would have straddled a zone boundary, it’s possible it could have produced a possible conflict. However, considering the existence of two consecutive stations with this fate on the Millennium Line, I think that is a moot point nowadays.

All that remains today of Boundary Station, formerly Park Ave Station is just a retaining wall for the old BCER overpass which was torn down sometime three decades ago.

This originally appeared on cohost.org/VancouverTransit but has been moved here due to the site’s shutdown.