Doesn't NYC mostly (mostly) use the same trains across the network? on the tube, each line was (historically) operated by a different train company, so most lines have a (somewhat) different profile but dedicated rolling stock to each line, along with different aged stock dependent on the procurement cycle or even age of the line itself.
Boston T would be a better one as each of the colour lines are significantly different from each other, especially concerning green line trolleys. Even having not lived there for a number of decades I could probably still pick out at least red and green line. I might struggle to pick apart orange and blue line from each other as they are pretty similar trains, but I never spent significant time on that line...
(My dad was a complete train nut and spent much of his spare time audio recording train rides around the world and when we lived in Boston, the local subway got the bulk of his attention. Here in the UK his hobby even got picked up by various TV companies and he got brought onto various talk shows to demonstrate his "Blind trainspotting" prowess by identifying various trains from their sound. All a ruse of course but it was a fun gimmick for a couple of years.)
Not that many different stocks now. The 4 sub-surface lines were given S7 or S8 stock according to platform length, and while it's entirely possible an S7 does sound different from an S8 I wouldn't count on it because these are basically the same train.
So that's a change from 5 stocks (two A variants, two C variants and a D) across four lines to two (S7 and S8) in terms of the rolling stock. The deep tube lines will all get variations on the 2024 stock, likely in 2027 although I believe the announced date still clings to "late 2026" but for now are all distinct.
> The deep tube lines will all get variations on the 2024 stock
I think that's a bit optimistic. Right now, the only thing that has confirmed orders is the replacement for the 1973 stock (Piccadilly line). The same order also has options for further trains which would cover the Bakerloo, Central and Waterloo & City lines, but somebody still needs to come up with the money for it.
For the Bakerloo line trains (1972 stock) that's probably going to happen, since those trains really are getting long in the tooth now, but for the Central/W&C line stock (1992 stock) there's currently a refurbishment programme underway, so depending on how that goes, those trains will probably continue running for a while further.
That still leaves the Northern and Jubilee lines (1995 and 1996 stock respectively), whose replacement trains, whenever they might happen, will probably need a new tender – it could be that whatever train gets selected then will be a close relative to the 2024 stock, but I don't think it's automatically a given.
And the Victoria line – that one only got new trains in 2009, so those will continue for quite a while further and will be the last ones due for replacement on the deep tubes.
That's a good point especially about Victoria, by the time a 2009 stock train is at its replacement age the "new tube for London" design is probably going to look pretty archaic and budgets are always too tight to make a replacement early. Who knows, by then TfL might actually have a "driverless train" plan for these lines which makes sense.
Ah thanks. I had thought there would be some consolidation by now. It's been a few years since I regularly went to London and haven't been following it closely.
The NYC subway (and elevated) trains were also originally operated by several different private companies, and there are still at least two major types of rolling stock (used separately on "A" division and "B" division lines). Maybe less variation than London, but I really couldn't say having never been to London.
Chicago's "El" and subway system AFAIK, uses the same rolling stock on all lines though there may be a couple of different generations of cars in service.
Good to know. I've never spent more than a few hours on NYC transit and I didn't notice many differences on the trains I went on, so was largely going by found media and assumption (terrible thing to do, I know!)
Can you not use the "free for hobbyists" license? Autodesk make it unreasonably hard to renew it, instead dark-patterning you into upgrading to the paid tier. (Unless of course you need paid tier features)
I agree on the easy to use front though. I'm trying to move to freecad but it hasn't had its blender moment yet.
That's what I used for a long time but it was way too restrictive: like I can have 10 saved designs at a time with their entire timeline in case I wanted to go back or modify/improve anything. And converting an STL back into a solid doesn't give the best results and adds a lot of overhead. So until something better pops up, I have no other choice but to pay for it.
getting the hardware is only half the battle. Hard agree with going for a MiSTer setup however it's quite an expense for someone dipping a toe in.
ultimately it's hard to prescribe the "definitive" amiga experience in 2025 to a total newbie. At a surface level, for many people, amiga ownership was simply a console like experience -> Buy an amiga 500, and shovel game disks into it, play game, turn it off. Replicating that is super easy with either just a raspberry pi and the PiMiga distro (see the Chris Edwards youtube channel for details) or even retropie comes with support for amiga OOTB however it comes with the caveat of having a little background knowledge of the hardware combinations available.
The ABSOLUTE easiest way of getting a taste of amiga is to get hold of a "The A500" mini console which comes with pre-packaged games (but also lets you run your own once you've got to the end of enjoying the 30 or so pack-ins).
There is the WinUAE emulator for windows that's excellent (so good, you can use it to prep real-world Hard drives for actual physical amigas) but it's complicated without prior knowledge of the OG hardware combinations.
The most common setup back in the day (for UKers playing games at least) was an OG Amiga 500 with OCS (Original Chip Set) with 0.5MB RAM(ChipRAM - essentially shared system and graphics memory) and maybe an optional extra 0.5 MB upgrade (FastRAM - CPU only memory, though often known now as SlowRAM because it was directly accessable by the CPU only but had to share the bus with the chip RAM) and 1.3 Kickstart ROM.
This was later upgraded by the A500+ which came with ECS (Enhanced Chip Set) which gave a few added graphical modes, 1MB of Chip RAM (typically upgradable to +1MB fast RAM) and kickstart 2.0. it broke compatibility with some games and was a min spec for others.
This was replaced directly by the A1200 which came with an upgraded CPU (68020ec at 14 MHz) AGA chipset (16.7 mil colour palette, 256 on screen), internal IDE interface and kickstart 3.0 with 2MB ChipRAM out of the box.
The A500+ was also indirectly replaced with the A600. Essentially a A500+ mini - they updated the manuafcturing to surface mount, reduced the PCB size significantly and removed the numberpad from the keyboard and added the IDE interface from the A1200. it was supposed to be a cost reduced version but initially cost more to make than the outgoing A500+. It was hated at the time because it cost more at retail and had less features (lack of keypad broke a lot of software, IDE interface wasn't seen as beneficial at the time and the side expansion port was replaced by a PCMCIA port which again only had much more expensive peripherals at the time)
The rest are the "Big Box" amigas - computers with a separate keyboard from the main box case:
A1000 (the OG or just "Amiga" when it launched)
A2000 - The workhorse version of thw A500 with expansion, processor,video upgrade slots.
A1500 - a UK specific cut down version of the A2000 just launched to inflict trademark damage to a sole trader startup making aftermarket cases for the A500.
A3000 - the first fully 32-bit platform - ECS and 32-bit 680x0 CPUs available (IIRC both 68020 and 68030 though might be wrong about the '020)
A4000 - a big box equivalent to the A1200 - AGA and expansion
A4000T - towerized version of A4000 - the holy grail for collectors and rare as hens teeth.
However in 2025 getting involved with the amiga scene is a huge rabbit hole as the community is so large there are always wonderful projects (such as PiStorm) for enhancing and extending the life of these now very aged machines.
Sorry, this ended up a bit of an essay on what was only supposed to be a quick note...
> "The A500" mini console which comes with pre-packaged games (but also lets you run your own once you've got to the end of enjoying the 30 or so pack-ins).
I count to 26, plus one free download they provide for testing out the USB feature.
Amiga Forever in Windows (or in WINE) is about as easy to run, plus it comes with nice pre-configured system images to boot into Workbench. Not having much real Amiga experience I struggle a bit with making use of those. I tried to install some freeware Amiga applications (trackers and such) but not much success.
I spent less on getting my MiSTer up and running than I did getting my A500+ and a lot less than getting my A1200 setup running. And I have the original Ultimate MiSTer setup.
With the RetroRemake and QMTech setup you're up and running for the 8/16-bits for under $200 all-in which for most people in tech in the US isn't a big ask. The experience is also much better than emulation IMHO.
My workaround for multiple PCB's for one schematic is to have the schematic as a top level sheet which can then be imported into sub-level projects. so each PCB becomes it's own project but use the common schematic sheet
My personal experience with a modern microwave (they mostly seem to be the same design internally, coming from the same chassis with the same electronics just a different button panel) was that the internal light bulb blowing generated a surge (it was a mains voltage bulb) that wasn't fused so the next nearest thing in the mains circuit was a trace on the motherboard that vaporized.
There is no way of easily changing this bulb (inside the main casing with no access panel for the bulb) so for want of a single in-line fuse, the entire microwave was rendered scrap[0] by the lifetime of a light bulb.
[0] - Except for the fact that I care not for electrical safety "DO NOT OPEN" warnings of doom due to being actually competent with handling high voltage equipment and being able to do a board level repair on the burned out trace without touching the very large capacitors associated with the very high voltage side controlling the magnetron...
Just saying "Pixar movies" was probably not a great example. They can be deliberately location ambiguous (Monsters Inc., Toy Story - though it's clearly _somewhere_ in America, The Incredibles - a generic "metropolis"/50's futuristic city, lightyear, Elemental) or very specifically somewhere (cars - mashup of Route 66 towns, Finding Nemo - Sydney when on land, Ratatouille - Paris, etc...)
It makes sense to "translate" locale cultural indicators in say Wall·E which was very location agnostic but not so much for say Turning red which is very culturally specific.
The localization of The Incredibles in Argentina was embarrassing, though someone must have thought it was a good idea. They used local voice actors popular at the time (though not so much today) with strong porteño (Buenos Aires') accents. They also referred to the streets with Argentinian names, e.g. "let's turn that corner of Corrientes Avenue!". The problem is that Corrientes Av is very typical of Buenos Aires, but nothing on screen looked anywhere close to it, so the whole thing was ridiculous and embarrassing, sort of like if the characters pretended they were in Tokyo and were Japanese.
What if they had gone the extra mile (maybe possible in the near future) and reskinned every character to look more Argentinian, and rethemed the city to look more like Buenos Aires, would I have been happier? Certainly not -- I want to see the original movie as intended, not some sanitized version designed to make me feel "at home" and not challenge me in the slightest.
(I watched the movie in English as well, mind you).
Boston T would be a better one as each of the colour lines are significantly different from each other, especially concerning green line trolleys. Even having not lived there for a number of decades I could probably still pick out at least red and green line. I might struggle to pick apart orange and blue line from each other as they are pretty similar trains, but I never spent significant time on that line... (My dad was a complete train nut and spent much of his spare time audio recording train rides around the world and when we lived in Boston, the local subway got the bulk of his attention. Here in the UK his hobby even got picked up by various TV companies and he got brought onto various talk shows to demonstrate his "Blind trainspotting" prowess by identifying various trains from their sound. All a ruse of course but it was a fun gimmick for a couple of years.)
reply