"ascends more than 2km (1,500ft)"
I think the maths may have gone a bit awry here
Extreme trainspotting on Britain's highest (and windiest) railway
The world's highest railway is the Xining-Golmud-Lhasa railway at 5,068m (16,627ft) above sea level and running 815km (506 miles). As much a political piece as a transport corridor, the line was designed to fuse China with Tibet – the country the People's Republic invaded and annexed in 1950. Britain's highest railway is …
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 08:22 GMT Florida1920
1,097m (3,599ft)
That's barely off the ground. The Mount Washington cog railway in New Hampshire climbs from 2000 ft ASL almost to 6280 feet. The weather on Mount Washington is pretty fierce, too. The highest non-cyclonic wind speed measured on Earth, 231 mph, occurred at its summit. Winter temps can go into the minus 40s, Celsius and Fahrenheit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Washington_Cog_Railway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Washington_(New_Hampshire)
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 21:03 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: post from someone from Texas
"highest point in Texas"
Some would argue (mostly from Arkansas) That the highest point in Texas is the sign that says, "You are now leaving Texas".
FWIW, I've been to Texas, and still can't understand how someplace so far south can get so freakin' cold in the winter!
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Wednesday 5th July 2017 11:58 GMT spacecadet66
Re: post from someone from Texas
The first time I ever visited Texas, it was Houston in January and I hadn't brought a jacket. Because Texas is warm, right?
Nobody had told me about the Blue Northers: winds that start up around the Arctic Circle and blow due south down the prairies of Canada and the USA. They keep most of their strength because, as the Texans say, there's nothing to slow them down along their route except a couple of barbed-wire fences.
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Thursday 6th July 2017 21:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: post from someone from Texas
FWIW, I've been to Texas, and still can't understand how someplace so far south can get so freakin' cold in the winter!
Depends where in Texas. I think this winter in San Antonio maybe it got below freezing twice.
And that's because I live in the far northwest corner where it's colder than the rest of the city.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 18:39 GMT Florida1920
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
Texas
Highest elevation in Texas: 8,751 feet (2,667 m). As John Denver noted, to get really high you have to go to Colorado. Or elsewhere in the West. Driving the back roads around the western U.S., it's not unusual to cross passes at elevations exceeding 9000 feet (~3000 m). The roads are well maintained, but rock falls and avalanches are unpredictable.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 08:51 GMT IDoNotThinkSo
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
Maybe, but this is a UK website.
You could go up to the Jungfraujoch on a train if you want steep cog railways, to a height of 3454m, but we aren't in Switzerland either.
The weather in the Cairngorms is Oceanic rather than Continental, so the temperatures are slightly less extreme than in the US. I suspect there are actually more days of terrible weather in the Cairngorms than on Mount Washington, and they are spread throughout the year.
I don't think a few mph of windspeed either way makes much difference if you are out in it (although the anemometer on the railway actually measured 194mph in 2009).
Two climbers died on Cairngorm at a height of only 2400ft or so on a main path because they were unable to make the last few hundred yards to the car park into a wind-storm. Due to the oceanic nature of the environment, snow is often thawed and then refrozen into ice, which makes finding shelter extremely difficult.
Anyway, the expensive train set on Cairngorm is a bit of a white elephant, but an amusing one. I would normally walk up, though.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
"You could go up to the Jungfraujoch on a train if you want steep cog railways, to a height of 3454m, but we aren't in Switzerland either."
There is another underground station at a similar height, above the resort of Saas Fee. It is at the top of the underground funicular Metro Alpin. The Mittelallalin station claims to be 3,456m and also featured a London Transport Underground station name sign when I was there decades ago.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:23 GMT Cuddles
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
"The weather in the Cairngorms is Oceanic rather than Continental, so the temperatures are slightly less extreme than in the US. I suspect there are actually more days of terrible weather in the Cairngorms than on Mount Washington, and they are spread throughout the year."
It depends exactly what you mean by "terrible", but I wouldn't bet on it. Mount Washington has hurricane force winds on nearly 1/3 of days throughout the year as well as having snow fall year-round, and being much taller obviously temperatures tend to be a lot lower. Scotland can have some fairly miserable weather at times, but it nowhere in Britain is in the same league as places that get the really extreme stuff.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
Since American's have seen fit to belittle our mountain, I'd just like the bring up the subject of their utterly shit President.
So, to all American's who like to weigh in and proclaim everything you have is bigger and better, just remember, you've got a orange haired fuck witted cuntbubble for a President.
And we don't.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 18:48 GMT Florida1920
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
Since American's have seen fit to belittle our mountain, I'd just like the bring up the subject of their utterly shit President.
So, to all American's who like to weigh in and proclaim everything you have is bigger and better, just remember, you've got a orange haired fuck witted cuntbubble for a President.
And we don't.
And yet. And yet. Such luminaries as W.H. Auden, Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, and more recently Christopher Hitchens and John Oliver have chosen to emigrate here. Yes, Kevin Spacey has gone the other way. I've been to the UK. It's a nice place to visit.
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Wednesday 5th July 2017 16:33 GMT Antron Argaiv
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
you've got a orange haired fuck witted cuntbubble for a President.
I'd ask you not to remind us, but he's hard to ignore.
He doesn't bother me so much as the realization that roughly half of my fellow voters thought (and I use the term extremely loosely) that electing him President would be a good idea.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 09:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
It is high for the UK. Yes we know that everything is bigger , better, badder and kicks more ass in the USofA but this is rather closer to home and us Brits don't have to endure the TSA and HSA to get to it which given the current uncertainty about travel with anything more than your money and passport is a huge bonus.
I know the Mt Washington railway and have been to the top as I spent two years living in Manchester (N.H.)
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:00 GMT Alan J. Wylie
Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)
The Mount Washington cog railway in New Hampshire climbs from 2000 ft ASL almost to 6280 feet
There's a Cog Railway up Pikes peak: 14,115 ft (4302m)
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 12:59 GMT Alan J. Wylie
Re: There's a Cog Railway up Pikes peak
An 875bhp Peugeot 208 would be a little more exciting
To bring this thread back onto a computing topic:
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 08:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Due to the changes in gradient on the route up the mountain, the angle of the floor of the funicular seemed barely ever to be level when I went up it. Also, the queues were huge, because it's the only major lift up the mountain from the base, and the tows from the bottom were closed due to there only being a thin covering of snow when I was there.
The impact on the mountain of the ski resort is almost certainly less than that of any of the major ski resorts I've been to in europe. Apart from the funicular, it's all T-bars and button tows and no chair lifts or cable cars, so the amount of construction on the mountain is a lot less. As for wildlife, it's the only place I've seen a Ptarmigan (the bird, not the top station), but that might be because I probably make less noise skiing down a mountain than when I'm walking. It also seems to be closed due to bad weather more often than the european resorts...
Saying that, I had a great time spending 3 days skiing there, and my kids skied without complaining in winds only just below the threshold of the level at which they close the resort. (I've never spent so much time skiing in goggles rather than sunglasses.) My recommendation would be to stay at the Cairgorm Lodge Youth Hostel, which is out of town, (book a taxi from the station, because there aren't many in town) but on the route for the buses to and from the resort. I went there a couple of years ago, they were friendly and the food was pretty good.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
