Comments by "Joe R M" (@joermnyc) on "DownieLive" channel.

  1. Guessing someone else is loading the 9 o’clock gun since the training would take too long?
    1
  2. Pretty sure if there is a welcome sign, it’s probably easier to see from the lower windows than the dome. 🤷‍♂️
    1
  3. Needs to have a hole on both sides of a tunnel. 😂
    1
  4. I was wondering what the next series would be, and figured Europe (or Australia), but didn’t guess it would be the canals in the UK! Never disappointed with your content Mike!
    1
  5. Yes, I made it a point to find events at any potential destinations, and it’s how it wound up seeing a lot of baseball games around the west coast. Unfortunately when I was in Toronto the Blue Jays were out of town, and the days they were back pushed the cost to visit out of my budget, but I did tour the stadium and got to walk on the field (this was before they switched to real grass). Other places had other things I was interested in, like Windsor Castle just outside of London, Dublin Castle, the USS Constitution up in Boston (it was winter, no baseball), and the Pinball Hall of Fame out in Vegas (it’s since moved onto the Strip).
    1
  6. Talk about finding the “notes” in a wine!
    1
  7. We have plenty of Cherry Blossoms and other flowering trees in Chinatown here in NYC, and yet people here obsess over going to Washington DC to see them instead. 🤷‍♂️
    1
  8. Hey, my hotel in Toronto was right around the corner from Union Station back in 2007, and that seems like so long ago… it was the Strathcona, tiny room (mostly taken up by the bed), but a giant bathroom, but I was out around town most of the day so I didn’t mind the tiny room. Didn’t use the GO trains, but did use the TTC, especially the old streetcars, that have since been replaced. (I still have a TTC token left over somewhere.) That closed funicular by the Hornblower dock looks very similar to the Angel’s Flight in Los Angeles, which is also about the same age I believe. (But at least that has a staircase).
    1
  9. Speed is why airplanes won out over airships. Several days transatlantic versus several hours. (Concorde did it faster, but at too high of a ticket price, plus the planes were aging and replacement parts were becoming scarce.)
    1
  10. There’s a swing through the US (Austin, then Vegas), Mexico and Brazil coming up. The ticket prices being talked about for Vegas are very high, and I’m sure finding a hotel isn’t going to be a problem, but finding one that isn’t charging a lot of money will be.
    1
  11. Too bad there doesn’t seem to be passenger trains in the territories (Nunavut, Northwest and Yukon) because I’d love to see more of this series!
    1
  12. Plenty of disease 200 years ago, modern medicine has saved an untold number of lives since we don’t have to worry about cholera, diphtheria, yellow fever, Scarlett fever, etc.
    1
  13.  @ncard00  unfortunately some rail lines can’t quite get the power to the tracks or can’t invest in catenary or 3rd rail power.
    1
  14. I think it leaves around 3pm so the passengers get good views of the Rockies the next day. 🏔
    1
  15. The train is actually 2 trains, the Texas Eagle, and the Sunset Limited, they join/split in San Antonio, and the observation car and dining car go on to New Orleans (the Sunset Limited used to run all the way to Florida until Hurricane Katrina hit, the damaged tracks were never brought back up to specs for passenger service, which is not cool as the Gulf Coasts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida no longer have a direct Amtrak connection to the West Coast.
    1
  16. Nice to hear that they couldn’t just bulldoze homes and businesses to put in the sky train, here in the US they’d just “Eminent Domain” their way to buying up the properties and then knocking everything down. Then again we’re pretty bad at building new public transit.. the 2nd Avenue subway added 3 new underground stations and the total build cost was probably more than enough to build an entire new line in another nation, they are supposed to build 3 more phases of this line (1 more up to Harlem, and then 2 heading south to the Financial District (rumors that the line will have provisions for a new tunnel to Brooklyn since the last station under Hanover Square has to be built deep underground to avoid other infrastructure.)
    1
  17. The ammonia is used as an industrial refrigerant, it’s highly efficient and low cost, but it’s toxicity and corrosive tendencies on certain materials limit where it can be used… but the International Space Station uses it to keep the station comfortable (it’s designed so any leaks vent out into space.)
    1
  18. So is that how Nicole got to visit most of Australia with you? Are you learning the language, I find learning with a partner (my wife) made things stick better, (we learned Danish and Bulgarian for trips to both places, we still joke with each other about the Danish course because some of the sentences were kind of hilariously specific like “Lego-butikken er lukket” (The Lego store is closed).)
    1
  19. Saw sea lions in California… best to give them some space, they are heavy, they bite and they can crush CARS.
    1
  20. If you’re ever able to catch up to it, seeing the Union Pacific Big Boy in the states is a must… that is a beast (used to be coal fed, but converted to run on oil).
    1
  21. VIsiting Copenhagen, they also have a driverless Metro, I believe they just opened up one or two new lines since we were there. It was cool because there two bench seats at the front window, so you can sit and pretend you’re “driving” the train. 😆
    1
  22. As long as he was shoreside it should count. 🤷‍♂️
    1
  23. Canals can change an economy, New York harbor used to be just another harbor, but after they built the Erie Canal all the way from Lake Erie to the Hudson River, all those barges bringing goods to and from the interior of America up and down the Hudson to New York and suddenly we were THE major harbor in the WORLD. It’s Panama Canal level of changing the game.
    1
  24. All the CW superhero shows kind of gave up on hiding those buildings at some point or another (especially Supergirl after they moved out of Los Angeles for the second season.)
    1
  25.  @markmh835  Not when the US/Canada border is currently closed though, which is sad.
    1
  26. Really cool you rode from Vancouver, so many videos for the Canadian start in Toronto.
    1
  27. If you can, go find the Union Pacific Big Boy, the largest steam locomotive ever. I believe it does runs like this in Wyoming. The steam whistle is LOUD, but low pitched.
    1
  28. I’m jealous, the Canadian Rockies look so much cooler than the American ones.❄️
    1
  29. My wife and I went to Sydney and visited the Taronga zoo… flew all the way from NYC, only to find the Kangaroos were having a nap! (So was the Koala). We did get to see smaller Wallabies and even got to touch a Quokka (with supervision, very rough fur!) at the smaller zoo in Darling Harbor the next day. We did miss out on Wombats because they are Crepuscular (dusk and dawn active), but got to see Tasmanian devils and a lot of rare animals from elsewhere in the world. Cut to us back in NYC and we find out: the Staten Island zoo has Kangaroos 🦘! Trekked out there from Queens and sure enough they were up and bouncing! (Plus there were Emus in the same enclosure). So we went all the way to Australia, only to find bouncing Kangaroos two boroughs away. (Plus the Central Park childrens’ zoo has a Kookaburra, beautiful bird, but a very strange song.
    1