Next Stop: Mae Klong, Thailand
One of the largest fish and produce markets near Bangkok is effectively bisected by a train track. Vendors flank the rail line and the name of the place translates to “Umbrella Pull-Down Market.” The seemingly odd name refers to this very specific feature (or arguably: bug), that fundamentally shapes how this market works. Because those vendors are not set far back from the tracks, as one might imagine — they set up their goods right against the rails on either side.
Shoppers, meanwhile, have to actually walk between the rails where the trains go. When a train approaches, alarms sound so that people know to get out of the way and vendors quickly pull back their wares and they lift up their awnings, hence the name of the market.
There are accidents, but for the most part, they are few and far between. And most of them are fairly harmless, like: a train hitting someone’s wares that got left too close to the tracks, or bumping a table that didn’t get pulled back far or fast enough. Some vendors also have particularly clever solutions, like wheeled carts that are set into little tracks that they’ve created in the pavement — this helps them more quickly and consistently get their things back out of the way.
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I love this episode. I have been to the train market in Thailand and it is super-impressive how smoothly the process of pulling the stalls back goes – and they put the stalls back out immediately the train has gone past their bit of the market. The market is near the terminus too so I saw the train driver signal his order to a milk tea shop on the way in, and pick it up as he went past on the way back! It’s not true though that the market was there before the railway line – what happened was that the railway line goes past a market building, but to sell within the market building you need to pay a fee, so some stallholders will set up just outside the market so they don’t have to pay the fee but still get all the customers who are coming to the market. (You see this in markets all over Thailand). Because there are not many trains each day that go to that station, some stallholders must have thought that the land by the tracks was too good real estate to pass up!
Being from northern Germany, and also being a huge Ärzte-fan, this episode made my day ❤️
Ye should do an episode on the role railways played by the colonisers in their colonies. Although Ireland was in theory a part of the UK, it was nonetheless treated as a colony. The Irish catholic populace were believed to be lazy, poor and stupid: a state they had been left in after the enactment of the Penal Laws in the 1690s.
At the turn of the 1900s, Ireland had one of the densest railway networks in the world and this network was designed to bring resources from the countryside to the ports as cheaply as possible.
The purpose of colonies is the extraction of resources for the benefit of the colonisers. It is no surprise that the London government encouraged the building of railways all throughout the British Empaah.
With independence in the 1920s, the following trade war with the UK in the 1930s and the appeal of the motoring car to the individualistic Irish, the majority of the railways lines were torn up at the beginning of the 1960s. There was a lot of hatred towards the railways then and they were removed with an astonishing rapidity. It was time when anything that symbolised the old Protestant past was done away with. The Georgian buildings in Dublin suffered much the same fate. Only lines that were profitable were retained.
While this did may have made financial sense in a poor country as Ireland then, little thought was given to them as a future resource. We have the car, what more do we need?
That’s very interesting. I wonder whether there is a similar lroblem with railway planning here in Australia, another colony of England? Our railways are definitely more likely to go from a coal mine or wheat farm to the docks than from suburb to suburb.
Great story, but one minor inaccuracy. MTA conductors don’t have to point before leaving the station, they have to point before opening the doors of the train upon entering a station.
The zebra signs are in the middle of the platform – if they can point up at the sign, they can be certain that all of the doors are on the platform.
Loved the reference to Sylt/Westerland! The Island & trains have actually just been in the news in Germany which makes a fun little addendum.
During the summer, Germany is planning to offer a pass to use the whole German train network for only ~USD10/month, which led to fears that ‘the unwashed masses’ might use these tickets to flood the ‘island of the rich & famous’.
See https://www.thelocal.de/20220506/what-is-sylt-and-why-is-it-terrified-of-germanys-e9-holidaymakers/ for more details :)
Love the opening! Reminds me of a short, but elegant funicular that I had an opportunity to ride in the heart of Kyiv, Ukraine. Check it out on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv_Funicular
Just as a little aside to pointing and calling, it is also used in aviation, most often with setting and altitude, with the pilot flying setting the altitude, pointing at the number on the screen and calling out the number verbally, well the pilot monitoring does the same thing
All this talk of funiculars, and you didn’t mention one of the nicest funiculars in Europe, between Starý Smokovec and Hrebienok in the High Tatras ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star%C3%BD_Smokovec%E2%80%93Hrebienok_funicular
Or the urban funiculars in cities like Budapest, Prague, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Kyiv, Odessa and Salzburg ? (The Salzburg funicular being arguably one of the oldest of its kind in the world.) Or the Skansen and Gubalówka funiculars ? Or the many, many funicular lines of Italy and Switzerland ? ;-) Plenty more, almost too many to list.
There’s a fascinating bit of variation between the specific types: Some are fully-fledged long-distance cablecars, while some of the urban ones often seem like little more than outdoor elevators traversing a short but steep hillside track.
Either way, another great episode. A real listening pleasure. :-)
Check out a unique mono-rail train that ran for 36 years from 1888 – my hometown in Ireland- Lartigue railway. https://www.narrowgauge.nl/site/english/listowel.htm
There’s quite an age variance when it comes to point-and-call among Japanese rail workers. While a young conductor fresh out of training will call out loudly and point with precision, an old veteran will likely just mutter and vaguely gesticulate.
Let me start by saying I’m an architect born & raised in Northern Germany. So I love Kurt and everything he does – with Nordstrandischmoor being top of the list.
I suspect, though, Kurt spent his time in Germany more down South, not up North. otherwise, he’d realize that the lyrics are weird: they keep singing about the island but never mention the name – they mention only the name of the largest city. It’s like Blue Öyster Cult singing about “the island” and the song is called “East Hampton” (quite literally because Sylt is the Hamptons of Hamburg).
More importantly, I think you’ve missed a grand opportunity: we’ve all made the sound of a steam train chugging and the whistle blowing. I was sooo looking forward to Roman emulating that at the end of the episode “stitchetcher stitchicher, eex-eeeeem”