The Daily Hilario: Magic carpets made of steel

RAILROAD BLUES:

RAILROAD BLUES:

Been reading quite a bit about America's shoddy state of train infrastructure in light of Tuesday's crash.  Here's just one sobering overview from the National Journal.

In my younger days, I spent a good portion of my life traveling on trains in Europe, for both pleasure (I adore trains and rail travel) and out of necessity.  I've been on everything from the crappy motorized park benches of the Eastern Bloc to the Inter-Cities and the Euro-Cities and all the lovely German or French high speed trains and even the smoky Spanish ones.  And all of them compare favorable with Amtrak, especially as it exists out here on the West Coast.  Sure, the railcars are nice enough.  But the service is dog-slow (freight has the right of way, and that's assuming the tracks are in good condition) and almost never on time.  The journey from Sacramento to San Fran (well, Oakland) is supposed to take 1.5 hours.  You'll be lucky to get there in 2.5.  And then you're still in Oakland, so you have to take the metro over to the City.  The 800+ mile journey from Seattle to Sacramento is supposed to be about 21 hours long.  My parents took that once; it was at least 24 hours in either direction.  Shambolic.  I suppose that's to be expected for an underfunded afterthought.

FOOTBALL (all times BST):
19.45:  League Two, promotion playoff semifinal, 2nd leg:  Wycombe Wanderers vs. Plymouth Argyle (3-2 agg.)
19.45:  League Two, promotion playoff semifinal, 2nd leg:  Southend United vs. Stevenage (1-1 agg.)
20.05:  Europa League, semifinal, 2nd leg:  Fiorentina vs. Sevilla (0-3 agg.)
20.05:  Europa Leauge, semifinal, 2nd leg:  Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk vs. Napoli (1-1 agg.)