These days, South Africa is starting to look like a real-life enactment of the last few chapters of Atlas Shrugged.
Rampant cable theft has damaged South Africa’s railway signalling systems to the extent that train operators are effectively forced to operate “blindly”, necessitating frequent stops at railway transfer stations and manual phone-ins to avoid train collisions.
Pereira said a trip between Ermelo in Mpumalanga and Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal that typically lasted nine hours would now take over double that time.
That is because each stop can take about 20 minutes, provided the machinist has cellphone signal.
On the rare occasion that they are unable to communicate to the CTC due to no reception, the stop could add another two to three hours to the total trip time.
When this starts in Canada I hope someone has the courage to wipe out everyone responsible.
This would be a great retirement playground for the WEF faithful – if it wasn’t so mild a climate.
Good thing they don’t have nuke capabilities anymore.
American railroads waaaay back when operated without many signal systems. They rigidly stuck to timed schedules to make sure the trains didn’t collide.
Is there some reason the South African trains could not do something similar?
Of course there’s a reason. That reason is South Africa is run by idiots who can’t tell time (just like the rest of Africa).
If the trains can’t run on time in Canada, why on earth would you think they could accomplish that in South Africa? (As an aside, I was the train station in Geneva, Switzerland in 1990 and they came on the PA to announce that the train from Berlin would be 2 minutes late!)
I read Atlas Shrugged three or four times when I was younger. I haven’t read it in decades, yet some scenes still remain vivid to me. The men operating the trains with hand signals in the bowels of NYC was one of them. I’m waiting for the day when we can’t get fresh grapefruit in Toronto.
LOL.. I saw this on the news. These fools are stealing everything
Are you sure it was not a video from New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago or LA?
True.
It is, just not yet
But the electric grid load shedding problem is improving:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/522741-eskom-announces-daily-load-shedding-breaks-2.html
Guess what? It is happening here in Alberta. I personally know of two small gas fields that were shut in because the company couldn’t keep up with cable theft. Cable and battery theft (batteries for comms in remote areas) may net a crackhead 20 to several hundred bucks but can cost the energy company thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to replace.
The Rand and the USD were 1:1 at one time. Open heart surgery was pioneered in SA. That was a long time ago now. I am sure some Boor was saying “That will never happen here.”
Reason #1 of 10,000 not to own an EV. Can’t lock it in the garage because it might ignite, can’t leave it in the driveway to charge because they’ll steal the charging cable
I had to chuckle, I shouldn’t really because it’s my tax dollars but Hydro were doing upgrades to our very tucked in community here…so tucked in in fact you wouldn’t know it was there unless you were actually looking for it. “Remote” is the word I’m looking for.
They left a spool of copper and other stuff in the entrance way off the main hiway in preparation for the next morning, the rationale being it was ok given the location…Nah. I remember shaking my head and thinking “That will not be there in the morning.”
Sho nuff. Gone.
There’s a certain segment of society that have an eye for that stuff.
Inside job? That’s crazy talk.