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urfavleo777 · 5 months

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warnings: a mention of death, loneliness, depression. soundtrack: last christmas, santa baby, let it snow! let it snow! let it snow!

this is part 1.

The day before Christmas 10:15 PM

"Oh, thank you so much, Y/n," your boss said warmly. A few strands fell onto her narrow shoulders, caressing the fabric of her burgundy sweater. She was no more than sixty but with her class she would still beat most of the modern supermodels.

You've been working at Josephine's shop since November with the main goal of earning extra money for your college. You needed it to pay for your college tuition. Before, your financial situation was making you suffer. You no longer had any hope. You were even close to dropping out of college. But then Josephine appeared, looking for an employee for her Christmas store. After a very long period of poverty you could finally afford a nutritious meal during the day.

Your previous boss didn't treat you right. He was behind in paying you money, he didn't respect the fact that you had studies outside of work, and there were times when he was verbally violent towards you.

Josephine was always understanding towards you and took an extremely sensible approach to mental health. She assured you many times that if you felt unwell, she would immediately offer you a break from work for a few days. You tried not to take advantage of her kindness, so at ten o'clock in the morning you diligently fulfilled your duties in the Christmas store.

Today was quite… different. It was Friday evening and instead of enjoying your free time in your small apartment, Josephine asked you to take over the duties until midnight.

"I have so much mess to clean up at home, and tomorrow is the day. If you said no, I would probably have let all my grandchildren down. Last year I promised them I will bake cupcakes for the next Christmas. They were so excited and happy about it…"

You giggled at her adorable confession.

"No problem, I swear," you assured her, but the woman didn't seem fully convinced. "Josephine, I don't mind staying here for a bit longer. It helps me to relieve stress a lot."

Josephine pursed her lips. Then she straightened her slightly hunched back and whispered with a soft smile on her face:

"Your soul is so pure. Your parents must be so proud of you."

At the sound of these words, spoken with surprising lightness, you immediately stiffened.

Parents, a thought crossed your mind.

Right. She couldn't know.

You brushed strands of long hair from your cheek, smiling awkwardly. Josephine started looking chaotically for her purse. Once she found it, she hugged you and squeezed your hands. When you felt her warmth in your hands, you froze. No one has ever given you as much love as Josephine did in that moment.

"Thank you so much, Y/n, but I really have to go. I'll make it up to you!" She turned and started towards the exit. When the door opened, frosty night air rushed in. An old guy walked in, passing your boss, but you didn't pay attention to him. Instead, you looked in Josephine's green eyes for the last time. She lowered her voice a bit, continuing. "Merry Christmas, Y/n."

Oh, no one in this world knew how much you hated those words. You swallowed loudly, pushing away the feeling of sadness with all your strength. The sight of the smile on the woman's face made you feel a knot in your stomach.

"Merry Christmas, Josephine," you replied, trying to reciprocate this warm gesture. After a moment, you realized that you had said it to yourself. Josephine was already gone. Now in the room, there was only you and an older customer, probably looking around for gifts for his loved ones.

11:55 PM

"Uh, is anybody there?"

You caught yourself falling asleep, but the stranger's nervous and deep voice woke you up.

You looked up from the till and saw an older man standing in front of you. His white beanie and fluffy Christmas sweater definitely caught your attention. You rubbed your eyes and was about to laugh when you realized how thin he was dressed. Okay, maybe he wasn't that old.

It seemed like he had arrived by car, because no one would wear just a sweater in a snowstorm like that. Before you could respond, the man overtook you.

"Okay, okay. I know you're about to close, but listen to me. This case is extremely serious. I drove all over town and, damn it! All Christmas shops are already closed! Can you help me choose the gifts? If you don't help me, I will be.."

You raised an eyebrow, trying your best not to smile. He got stuck in his little speech, but you had no idea why. Instead of continuing, he lost himself in your gaze, completely ignoring the ticking of the clock behind you. His mouth hung open slightly and his eyes which were already almost black seemed to darken as he focused on you. His body went rigid as he searched your eyes. Your heart was pounding in your chest. He was beautiful. You had never thought of a guy as beautiful, and it was strange. It was strange how he seemed to be looking right into your soul. But you didn't mind. No, you didn't care at all.

Or.. maybe a little bit.

In fact, you were the one who jumped back like someone had burned you when you realized it was almost time to close the shop.

"You must leave this store. Now."

"Huh?" he frowned, distracted. It took a while for it to dawn on him. "No! You can't do this to me."

You took the key out of the locker and were in the process of closing the cash register. Shit. Nobody taught you how to do that. That was always Josephine's responsibility and she was the one who always closed the shop. The man looked at you strangely. You decided to pretend you knew what you were doing.

"Do you even work here?" he mocked.

You felt his eyes on you and you clenched your jaw. You glanced up to tell him to piss off, but then your eyes met and the feeling of anger melted away. His eyes were widened slightly as you looked at him curiously. He felt the nerves radiating off of you. You shot him a tight lipped smile and you felt himself smile back. Fuck.

"Shit," you cussed under your breath. "I have to close the shop now."

You were still struggling to close the cash register.

"I'll help you close it," he muttered, still staring at you but you were too tired to even notice. "I've dealt with this before, too."

"And why should I believe you? Maybe you are some kind of thief? "

11:58. Fuck. The time was passing.

"I am not a thief."

"And why should I believe you?" you repeated the question once again.

"Just google my name," he sighed a little tiredly. You blinked your eyes twice, not knowing what he meant. "Let me buy something for my parents and I'll do whatever you want."

When you heard parents, you forgot what he had just told you. You were definitely traumatized or triggered by the word "parents", which was usually noticeable by the sudden change in your behavior.

Your soft breaths echoed through the whole Christmas shop. You lowered your head, completely embarrassing yourself in front of the potential client. It was the second time today. At least you didn't have to explain yourself to Josephine because you were able to mask it before.

"Please, don't hurt him." Y/n cried. "Please, I can't lose him too."

[…]

"Don't take loans on the black market, or you'll end up just like them."

[…]

"I'm completely alone."

[…]

"Shit, are you okay?"

You looked up, grimace on your face as the tall body of a man came into view. He looked concerned as he crouched down before you. His dark eyes searched for any indication you were in pain and when he saw you weren't he held out his hand for you to take.

"I'm okay," you nodded. "What am I doing on the floor?"

"I saw you fall," he said, as he lifted you up. You brushed the dust and dirt from your jeans. "Does it hurt?"

"No," you shook her head, still stunned. "Not much anyways."

"You hit the ground pretty hard," he frowned. "Maybe you should get yourself checked out."

You let out a forced laugh and he raised a brow. "Honestly, I'm good."

He nodded his head, eyes narrowed slightly before sighing. "Let me take care of you. Need a ride?"

God, just a few seconds ago he was using his all strength to buy something for his parents. Unless..

"Show me your pockets."

"What?" he frowned. He tried to find some clue in your eyes. "You think I stole something?"

God, he was atleast a foot taller than you were and you had to crane your neck to look at him.

"Well, seems like I have no choice," he shrugged.

The two of you fell silent, it wasn't awkward but neither knew what to say. He emptied all his pockets, the only things he had were his phone and his bank card.

You wanted to sink into the ground.

This stranger just offered to help you and you thought he was a thief. You tilted your head back, thinking about your next move.

You sighed, knowing exactly what you should do.

"Take it."

You handed him a matching sweaters that you assumed should be for his parents. He sighed in relief.

He was about to take out his card to pay, but you placed your hand on his, trying to making him understand that he doesn't have to pay.

"Just close the till, please." You smiled, feeling a bit better now. "And make your loved ones happy."

"No," he refused quickly "I have to pay for it. There is nothing for free."

It took a while to convince him not to pay. He finally sighed and accepted the two wrapped gifts from you. After he closed the till, he offered you a ride once again.

"Why don't you introduce yourself first?"

You were just leaving the store. It was cold. That was perhaps the understatement of the century. You couldn't remember the last time you had been so cold: the spiteful wind sliced through you like a sharpened blade, leaving a chill that shook you to your very core, and you tightened the thick scarf around you neck, pulling it up over your mouth. You locked the door and both went away, looking for his car, which wasn't parked that far away.

"It's strange that you don't know me."

"Woah, so you're kind of celebrity?" you laughed loudly. "You've got a big ego, man."

You finally reached his car. You didn't even notice the color because it was too dark and the car itself was covered in snow. But it didn't matter.

"Oh, that's very kind of you. Thank you." You said surprised as he opened the car door for you. He gave you a small smile. You took the front passenger seat. When you heard the sound of the trunk being closed, you realized that he must have been putting the gifts in there. You saw him through the snow-covered window. His hair was messy, and his sweater was slightly damp from the snow. His pink cheeks totally stole your heart. He looked like a little child after playing in the snow for several hours

"I'm Y/n," you spoke up as he appeared next to you. He clicked the heat button, smiling to himself. "Normal people usually say their name after my introduction."

"Who said I was normal?" you rolled your eyes before bursting out laughing again.

"You've got a beautiful name," he said, starting the car. "You can just call me Colby."

His eyes found yours and he smiled brightly. Your tiredness melted away instantly and you grinned back at him.

"Colby," you whispered to yourself.

"Hm?" he asked, keeping his eyes on the road. After a moment you could feel the relaxing warmth.

"Uhm," you cleared your throat. "You've got a beautiful name, too."

The corners of your mouth turned upwards. Eventually you stopped having everything under control. It was inexplicable. Every word this boy said aroused some emotion in you. It was strange because you two had just met.

He wanted to know more about you, every single thing. What you like, what you love. A twisted smile formed on his face. As he continued to steal glances at a female, who remained clueless about his mind.

You glanced out the car window, trying to see anything but darkness. Thanks to the car lights, you could have noticed that the streets were empty, not a person in sight that late, not even the stray dog walker or person who decided to go for a late night walk or run. Cars passed by from time to time, but there weren't many of them.

"Not a single soul." Colby sighed, a dreamy smile on his face as he looked down on the road. You nodded, stifling a yawn.

"I bet most of them are washing windows now," you whined, making him chuckle. "Can you take me to the nearest gas station? It's not far from home."

You noticed a slight disappointment on his face, which he quickly masked.

"Yeah, sure."

For a moment there was silence, and you took the opportunity to organize your thoughts. You wondered if you should start a conversation about what happened at the store. You were sure Colby had been thinking about it the whole time, but he didn't want to be too insightful. Even if he asked about your past, you wouldn't know what to answer him. That your parents owed a debt to evil people and died for not paying it off?

You squeezed your eyes shut at the thought. You stared at the moon, trying to calm your thoughts. Then you took a moment to appreciate that wonderful, breathtaking boy next to you. You looked at him in some kind of admiration. He was so beautiful that you were about to cry. You were so close to burying your hand in his messy hair, but it took all of your strength to hold back. A smirk formed on his face as he noticed you staring at his facial features. Instead of laughing at you, he simply changed the topic.

"How do you spend Christmas?"

"Hm?" you muttered, your voice still laced with sleep.

Colby raised his eyebrows at you. "You got a Christmas tree?"

You looked up at him and were torn between telling him the truth or lying.

"I spend Christmas alone. I don't have, I don't have anyone around me with whom I could share this evening. Also, Christmas are overrated. "

"I can help," he said, the words dropping out before he could think about them. Ordinarily, he calculated his sentences, sometimes spending hours or even days thinking about how he would word something, whether it was an email to a friend or a hypothetical debate. But there was no time for that now, the dilemma thrust right into his face with no escape route.

"What?" You swallowed.

"I can help you," he said. "You shouldn't be alone in this time. If you let me, I'd love to invite you to dinner with my p—. " he stopped mid-sentence. You felt like crying. No one in your life has ever shown you as much love as this man. Okay, maybe except Josephine.

"You don't mean that," you said quietly.

"I do," he said, a little more confidence in his voice now. "Let me help. I'll do anything. You shouldn't be alone. You can't be alone. Can I help?"

A faint smile grew over your lips and you nodded, colour rising to your cheeks as your smile grew. "Thank you. But your family-"

"Oh, they will be delighted to meet you."

He seemed nice enough, you thought, and there were surely worse ways to spend the next couple of hours than accepting his helping hand: you could take your mind off the solitude and maybe even make a friend.

But nothing could help you forget your past.

To Be Continued.

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trainsinanime · 11 months

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tell me about french train headlights

They're all the same! Or at least they were, from the mid-1950s to about the early 1990s. They all look like this:

Okay, some context for why I find this interesting. Suppose you see a picture of a train, especially one made in the second half of the 20th century, and you want to know where the train is from. The key trick to telling this at a glance is having a bit of autism, but more specifically, the headlights.

In Europe, all major and many minor countries used to have their own government-owned railroad and their own train-building industry, which would build trains to the specifications of their railroad company. There has always been some exporting going on, but for the most part, the trains you'd find in Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and so on would be all completely different. This has changed drastically over the past 20ish years.

One thing about this old model is that railroad companies would standardise certain parts within their fleets, especially small parts that need servicing and replacing every now and then. It saves on how many different types of spare parts you need to have.

Headlights are the most notable among these by far: Every train needs to have some of them. All trains have basically the same requirements for their headlights, no matter how fast or slow or whatever they are. Before LEDs, you needed to service the headlights regularly to replace the light bulbs, and as glass parts at the front of a fast moving vehicle, they can get damaged, so spare parts logistics are an issue. And most importantly, we as railfans can easily see them. So you get something like this:

As a result, basically all railroad companies in post-war Europe standardised their head- and taillights for all or most of their trains. And all of them had completely different ideas. Fundamentally, all of them agreed that you need white headlights and red taillights, and since modern trains are easily reversible, you put both of them next to each other.

But do you make the white and red lights the same size (West Germany, Netherlands) or different sizes (Austria, East Germany)? Are they separate things, or do you combine them into one assembly (UK, Switzerland)? Do you make them anything approaching normal sized or gigantic (Poland)? Maybe I'll do an overview post over these later, but I don't have enough pictures in my library right now and I'd have to scour Wikipedia for them later.

The French headlight design shown here is in many ways just one of many, but also interesting in its own right: The actual lenses for red and white are the same size, but the white headlight gets this huge lens assembly that makes it look much more prominent. You can clearly see that different French designers had very different ideas about whether you the center-lines (most of them), or the bottom of the lens assembly. Why is the headlight lens so big, and what are the metal was around the bottom half of the circle? I have no clue. My guess is to put some coloured glass panes in, but I have no idea why you'd need that. Also, note that the red taillight classically has a fresnel lens, that's unique as far as I can tell.

I've taken all these pictures in the Cité du Train, the big central French railroad museum in Mulhouse. (That's why I was posting about traveling to Basel early this weekend. Mulhouse is actually really close to Basel, and going via Switzerland is the most practical—and most scenic—route for me) The oldest locomotive I could find with these headlights was CC-7107:

During high speed trails in the early 1950s, this locomotive reached a speed of 326 km/h (203 mph). That made it only second best behind the other locomotive at the trials, BB-9004:

This one reached 331 km/h (206 mph), a world record that would not be beaten for a long time. The difference was nothing to do with technical performance. Instead, both locomotives melted their pantograph, the part on top that touches the overhead line to get power, at around 320 km/h (200 mph). BB-9004 had a second one that it could lift up to continue accelerating, while CC-7107 only had the one. For a long time, SNCF pretended that both locomotives had reached 331 km/h, to protect the reputation of both manufacturers.

What's notable for our purposes is that BB-9004 has different headlights. As far as I can tell, these seem to be an earlier standard design, also found e.g. on the CC-65001 diesel locomotive:

And even on steam locomotives, like this class 141 R:

So CC-7107 lost on the high speed world record, but it was the way of the future when it came to headlights. These headlights then started cropping up everywhere. From the detail pictures I've shown you above, we have e.g. Le Petit Gris (the small grey one, an EMU for suburban services in Paris):

A CC-6500, dressed up with a nameplate for the express train it was hauling. Fun fact: One locomotive of this type (not this one) was used in the US for a while, as Amtrak was trying out new electric locomotives to use. They weren't happy with it and bought a Swedish one instead, mostly because this locomotive's suspension did not work well with the American track quality.

A Z 2200, a diesel railcar for rural lines designed to be cheap first, second and third.

A BB-26000, which feels altogether way to new to be in this museum.

It's from the 1980s, so I guess the first are reaching retirement age. But at the same time: The train I took from Basel to Mulhouse was still pulled by one of these BB-26000.

Other favourites include the BB-25600 with its rare diagonal light arrangement:

Or the really terribly lit gas turbine train RTG, which puts the headlight on stalks:

Fun fact: Amtrak did end up buying a few these. They didn't use the same white headlights (although they did use the same stalks), but they did use the same fresnel lens red taillights.

And the headlights went all the way up to the top. To the TGV. Only these headlights aren't very aerodynamic, so for their high-speed train, SNCF decided to cover them up.

As far as I can tell, SNCF used these headlights in the TGVs up to the Réseau series, including the Eurostar. That meant that they're also found, though behind faded glass, on the TGV Atlantique 325 in the outdoor area. Number 325 is notable because it was involved in another high speed trail, and reached 515.3 km/h (320.3 mph) on May 18th, 1990.

That was a world record, of course; in fact only the French ever exceeded 500 km/h on conventional railroads. So these headlights did get their world record after all. They didn't get to keep it for long, though. In 2007, a newer TGV reached 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph). That one is still in service, though, and it was equipped with newer LED headlights. I think it's highly unlikely that this record will be broken anytime soon, but if anyone does, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the French again, they like that sort of stuff.

Some final odds an ends with the headlights, though: Here's CC-40101, which isn't actually relevant, I just like the way it looks.

Designed for service in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, with four different voltages and four different train control systems, and that with mid-1960s technology. It wasn't quite as successful as hoped, and in service it only ever reached Belgium, but still, look at that design. The front is supposed to evoke an athlete, a sprinter about to start, but this type of design has instead become known as "Nez cassé", broken nose.

BB-9291 shows a rare early version without red tail lights at all. Someone thought they were saving money.

This small work train has a free-standing version of the headlight, which shows us how deep it really is. Apparently, the French headlight is actually not that deep, and isn't that a nice summary for this post?

And a personal favourite of mine, I even bought a T-Shirt with it on it, the Z 600:

The design, in particular the side windows (recessed instead of flush, no outside visible gasket) says Swiss, the headlight and SNCF logo says French, it's narrow gauge and it has a third rail to provide power. Just all around a weird little train, for the weird little line known as the Mont-Blanc Express from France via Switzerland to the bottom of the Mont-Blanc mountain. The train was built in Switzerland, experts of building small trains for mountains, but for the French part of that rail line, so it got French headlights.

Headlights with exporting is a fun topic in its own right. Do you keep the headlights from the country of origin, or demand your own? You will find both approaches. Both Portugal and the Netherlands bought very similar electric locomotives from France. Portugal has French headlights, the Netherlands insisted on (less interesting) dutch ones.

These days, of course, you will still find these headlights, but they're getting rarer. They stopped being used in new trains around the mid-1990s. What's more, the ones you do find, like on this MI-84 in Paris, probably don't have the fresnel lens taillight anymore. Instead, those were replaced with LEDs.

LED lights for railroads make a lot of sense. They last forever and require less power. And since most railroads have standardised their head- and taillights, you just need to design one replacement light for most of France, and then keep building that one until SNCF stops giving you money.

(Since we're showing a picture from Paris, a quick note: These headlights were never used on passenger-carrying trains for the Paris metro. However, some work trains do have them.)

These days, standard headlights are completely gone. LEDs don't need a lot of replacing, and they give you much more freedom to do things like shapes and patterns and designs. Also, we don't have the "one country, one railroad, one rail industry" pattern anymore. Instead now we have multi-national rail conglomerates. Alstom is technically French, but arguably just as much German, ever since they bought Bombardier's rail division, nominally Canadian. Stadler is Swiss, except for the stuff they build in Germany or Poland or Belarus or Hungary or…, and some of their most interesting products right now are built and designed in Spain.

The end result of that is this:

That's a company I saw at a trade fair (Innotrans, Berlin, 2022) that makes LED train headlights, and specifically they make… all of them? Okay, I'm exaggerating, but this is a great picture to drive a European rail fan insane as they try to assign the different headlights to different trains. You get Stuttgart trams, German (and Turkish) high speed trains, lots and lots of Swiss stuff. Nothing specifically French that I could tell, but at least the German high speed train regularly travels to Paris.

The standard headlights, or their LED variants, were still in use for work trains until fairly recently. There are not that many companies that make rail grinders or ballast tampers, and those tend to just use whatever headlight their customer tells them to. But these days they go for shaped LED headlights as well, because they're just better, and because thanks to European standardisation, a headlight approved in one country can (generally) be used in all European countries.

#trains #railroads #sncf #france #alstom #alsthom

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