Word: rails
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...much else has changed. Wide streets curve around British colonial mansions. Bogyoke Market (great handicrafts, particularly lacquerware) sits beside animposing Victorian rail station. Downtown is filled with Italianate architecture covered in tropical mold. Near Trader's Hotel, cinemas have been allowed to reopen, offering plush 1950s-style seating and the latest releases from Hollywood for the period price of 25 cents...
Last month, executives of Richard Branson's Virgin companies rode a dingy and slightly delayed rail car-not, as it happened, one of Sir Richard's-up to England's East Midlands to unveil the first of a new line of super-fast tilting trains. The jet-shaped thing only crawled along a test track, but it would have been a beautiful sight for any boy who loves trains...
...took over the most dilapidated network in the United Kingdom," he says of the railway lines Virgin got from the old British Rail in 1997. "It hadn't had any investment in 30 years. Trains were falling apart." Virgin introduced airline-style pricing, so that the cost of business class and peak standard-fare tickets went up while pre-booked tickets got cheaper. (A testament to the power of brand: the government forced Virgin to paint its name on the trains as a condition of the sale.) Mean-while, Virgin's two long-distance lines have ranked near the bottom...
...little old-fashioned ballyhoo might help as well. Last month, in response to the steep decline in ridership after Hatfield, Branson announced "The World's Biggest Rail Offer," slicing ticket prices in half. Trouble is, all that demand led to a customer service "meltdown"-Branson's word-and Britain's newspapers were quick to report "chaos" in the rail system. "When Harrods has a sale on and there's a line outside, you don't hear anyone whingeing," says Bowker...
...Hours after a bomb linked to the Basque terrorist movement ETA killed two people outside a suburban rail station near San Sebastian, French police arrested Xabier Garcia Gaztelu, alias Txapote, who is believed to be eta's top military commander. He has allegedly participated in at least 12 murders, including that of Popular Party councillor Miguel Angel Blanco and Socialist lawyer Fernando Mugica. Txapote was seized in the French town of Anglet, close to the Spanish border, and will face trial in France before extradition to Spain. The arrest is a major blow to eta, whose most senior leader...