STOP PRESS
I have just (10th September) received a report, very kindly sent us by a Viennese fan, Gerhard Schumann, it consists of three parts. The first is a report on the Majorcan railways, culled from an Austria railways magazine called "Schienenverkehr aktuell", issue 4/2000. The second is his own report on the status of the Sa Pobla extension and finally, he says, he found in the German-language "Mallorca-Magazin" that a study has been ordered on the possibility of an airport tram as well as the Alcudia extension for about 80 million pesetas, the results of which will be presented in January 2001. Furthermore, the station building of Artá is going to get renovated in the near future.
Unfortunately, neither Mike Kaben nor I have the time or experience to translate Gerhard's report properly so I'm going to add a page to this newsletter which you can access
here and which contains the report, in full, in the original German PLUS a translation which Mike has done with the help of a computer-based program but which provides unusual reading. The translated section also includes some of Mike's own comments but possibly, by reading the two in conjunction, you may be able to get the whole story
Lastly, a word of caution (modified 26th October 2000) to you serious photographers who have previously used Kodak's truly excellent PhotoCD service. You may have received the impression that this appears to have been replaced by a new format called Picture CD and, whereas previously your photos were stored in at least five different resolutions from wallet-size to bedsheet size, the new one uses JPG compression format, only one size of image (1536 x 1024) and 36 pictures take just under 16Mb of a 640Mb CD !! The rest of the (540 Mb) CD contains more than 200Mb of software which attempts to autoload and persuade you to use all manner of fancy tricks with your pictures which is fine if you're not a really serious photographer who wants the choice of format and resolution which Kodak's PCD gives. I know which I prefer, my photo above is from a Kodak PhotoCD and is just above the middle of the resolution range, the largest regular option being 2048 x 3072 - four times the size of this image - and the smallest 64 x 92, like the one below.
Since Kodak appear to be determined not to promote the continued existence of the excellent PhotoCD I suggest that those of you who need such a format go and find a serious photography shop or a branch of Jessops which does still offer this service (not all of them do !!) or their own version of a similar kind. Unfortunately almost all these other regular processes are JPG-based too, instead of being based on an uncompressed format such as TIF and the image quality suffers accordingly. The five sizes on offer range from 96 x 64 to 1536 x 1024 (the same as Kodak's Picture CD) but if you can get it still, go for Kodak PhotoCD !! End of rant.
I've got a lot more of Gordon's pictures to scan so I'll save a few for further newsletters so thats all for now - please keep the contributions of photos and news coming in. Keep your eyes on the Railway magazines as, hopefully, there will soon be an article published by one of them on the Majorcan railways.
