At the beginning of the 20th Century, San Diego needed a fast and reliable rail connection with the east to maintain growth and prosperity. Due to the hostile desert mountains it needed to negotiate on its way to Los Angeles eastward, the planned connection became known as ‘The Impossible Railroad’.

It took the construction of 17 tunnels and 20 trestles to complete the most mountainous eleven-mile stretch, but the link was finally completed in 1919. However, when an earthquake destroyed one of the tunnels in 1932, the engineers were forced to chose an alternate route – which involved building The Goat Canyon Trestle.

The trestle is an absolutely spectacular structure over 600 feet long and 180 feet high, which is described as the longest curved wooden trestle in the world.¹

Apparently this route was closed in 1976 after extremely heavy rain, but recently reopened for freight. In fact if you follow the tracks far enough south/west, you’ll pass lots of different tunnels, several smaller trestles, and you’ll eventually come across a train.

See also: Our post about The High Level Bridge, and a more complete history of the Goat Canyon Trestle.

Thanks to James.

Near the top of Italy’s heel, there’s a mysterious-looking structure – an absolutely huge circle, 4 kilometres across! You might guess that this is a particle accelerator, but in fact it’s a perfectly circular high-speed test track – The Nardò Ring.

The ring is 12.5 km in circumference (around 7.8 miles) and is banked all the way round to allow the cars to achieve their absolute maximum top speed; which in practice means that a driver often need not turn the wheel at all once they get going. Essentially, cars can drive in a continuous straight line and yet somehow always end up exactly where they started…

The official site and the Wikipedia page are a little lacking, but see our other post about the Super Secret Volkswagen Test Track if you found this interesting.

Thanks to Ben, Luca D, munehiro, wanten, Luca, Rob James, woowoowoo, Craig, Dave, nixx, Alice Rizzoli, Mark, Francesco, Patrick and finally Tom!

Here in sunny Cornwall, England, is an absolutely fanastic-looking environmental complex – The Eden Project.

Built inside an old china clay quarry, the complex includes two sets of giant interconnected transparent domes made of ETFE cushions¹ (each emulating a natural biome), that house plant species from around the world. The larger of the two biodomes emulates a tropical environment, and is 55 metres high, 100 metres wide, 200 metres long, and covers 3.9 acres – which makes it the largest greenhouse in the world!

Not intended as a theme park, the Eden Project instead aims to highlight today’s major environmental issues, and they set a good environmental example too – the project’s energy all comes from local wind turbines, their litter is all recycled, and the massive quantity of water they use (to create the humid conditions of the Tropical Biome), is all collected rain water.

There’s actually a concert stage here (which doesn’t seem to have been built yet in these images), which was the location of the “Africa Calling” part of the worldwide Live 8 concerts of 2005, and the biodomes also feature in the 2002 James Bond movie, Die Another Day.

You can read more about The Eden Project at Wikipedia, visit the offical site, or to see more biodomes, see our older posts on Île Sainte-Hélène, a Geodesic Dome and Biosphere 2.

Thanks to Tom and Anthony Houghton.

Last week I started working in the nearby town of Swindon, where I asked my colleagues about the local sights. The unanimous answer to the best Swindon has to offer was “The Magic Roundabout“.

It may be saying something negative about the town if its most notable feature is a traffic junction, but the Magic Roundabout is truly a wonder of the world. And by “wonder” I don’t mean “wow” I mean “I wonder why they built such a stupidly complex junction”.

You see, the Magic Roundabout is in fact 5 small roundabouts surrounding one large centre roundabout. For the benefit of our non-British visitors I shall do my very best to explain…

In the U.K. we drive on the left hand side of the road, so on approach to a roundabout you give way to traffic coming from the right hand side. You then go clockwise around the roundabout, exiting where you see fit.

The Magic Roundabout complicates matters in that the moment you leave one roundabout you are at the junction of another. So, by aiming right on each roundabout you would actually traverse the central roundabout in an anti-clockwise manner. At least that’s the idea.

The roundabout was officially renamed from “County Islands” in the 90s because no-one used it official name, and roundabout fans Swindonweb even sell “I survived The Magic Roundabout” T-shirts.

Wikipedia

Thanks: Sfac, Russ, Jonathan Rawle, Arno Beckmann, Luke Sleeman, Stephen, The Red Max, Hans, John DeRoo, AndrewAnorak and my workmates.

North Dumpling Island is a small piece of land just off the coast of Connecticut and the private residence of Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Personal Transporter.

Like any good inventor it seems Kamen is a wee bit eccentric, having declared the island to be an independent state with its own currency (in increments of Pi) and its own navy, consisting solely of the amphibious vehicle we can see parked beside the north-east building.

Although his independence isn’t officially recognised Kamen even signed a non-aggression pact with then-president George H.W. Bush.

Kamen has also erected a replica of Stonehenge to one corner of his island, where I’m guessing he might drive a Segway around the stones, naked and chanting.

Wikipedia Links: North Dumpling Island & Dean Kamen

Thanks: Pat Trainor