Word: railways
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...describing magnetically levitated superfast trains as one of the benefits of high-temperature superconductors, you fail to recognize U.S. accomplishments in the area of fast trains. The speed record for a railway vehicle (steel wheels running on steel rails) is 255 m.p.h., set at the U.S. Department of Transportation test center in August 1974. Then, in discussing Japan's magnetically levitated train, you say its speed can be attributed to the lack of friction. You ignore the fact that at high speeds much of the resistance to forward motion is air resistance, which affects levitated trains too. Finally, you state...
...Congress of South African Trade Unions, the black labor organization whose offices had previously been raided by police, last week won a court order against such harassment. But the next day police found the bodies of four black railway workers, who had been stabbed and burned, in the Johannesburg rail yards. A fifth body was discovered in Tembisa township, to the east of the city. White officials charged that the five had been killed by blacks for refusing to join the strike. Police once again raided the COSATU offices, this time armed with search warrants, and arrested twelve people...
Much worse lay ahead. The center of conflict was the six-week-old strike by 18,000 railway workers. Officials of the government-run South African Transport Services suddenly announced that any striker who did not return to work on Wednesday would be fired. When the deadline arrived, only 2,000 workmen showed up at their jobs; the other 16,000 were told that the company had "terminated their contracts...
...government's attempts to look tough were partially undermined by growing labor unrest. The Johannesburg area has been hit by a strike of 20,000 South African Transport Services workers. Nearly 60 railway cars, mostly on commuter trains from the huge black township of Soweto outside Johannesburg, were fire bombed last week, and many others were stoned. Several passengers were injured, and one young black was shot and wounded in the leg, reportedly as he tried to hurl a flaming torch into a railway car. The strike, which started a month ago in a minor dispute between the Transport Services...
Jungle vines long ago began to reclaim the railway leading to the famous bridge on the River Kwai that the Japanese brutally built with Allied POWs and Asian laborers during World War II. Today the Burma-to-Thailand railway, whose bridge inspired a book and movie, is patronized mostly by Westerners visiting the graves of soldiers who worked on it. Hoping to tap such tourism, Thai entrepreneurs propose a $38.5 million reconstruction to turn the decaying area into an amusement park. Survivors of the bloody trail are not amused, however, and compare the idea to refurbishing Auschwitz as a Disneyland...