Train Around the World (not a post about fitness)

It’s good to have straightforward conversations but I love it when a chat takes a left turn and you find yourself, five, ten or thirty minutes later talking about something utterly different. Yesterday, I had a conversation with a man from Serbia which started on the topic of charity. Twenty minutes on we had covered, values, physics and the dangers of having increased lung capacity.

But even better than that, was an innocent question from my son that sparked the idea of a train journey around the world. Not a Michael Palin type journey using existing rail networks, but on an actual train track around the world.

First, we talked through the nature of a train journey like this. The train would need to travel fast enough to get the journey done in a reasonable time, but would also needs breaks for refuelling and maintenance. We glossed over the building of a world-encircling track however, we did need to do the maths for how many miles it would be.

Once we had used the distance/speed/time calculation to work out a reasonable average speed, factored in stopping times and broken the journey down into the appropriate number of stops we only had once last task.

Using Google Earth (other simulated Earths are available) we measured out a route and produced an itinerary that started on the 6^th December and arrived home again on Christmas Eve.

And yes, we both like Maths.

Have a great holiday season.