title: Matilda De Angelis

text: In 2017, she played the role of Brittia in the ensemble comedy film "The Prize" by Alessandro Gassmann. In 2018, she starred in the drama film "Youtopia", where she played a teenage girl selling her virginity online in order to save her family. In 2020, she was in the main cast of the HBO's television miniseries "The Undoing" and starred in the Netflix's original film "Rose Island", directed by Sydney Sibilia. For her role in "Rose Island" she was awarded with the David di Donatello for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Matilda De Angelis

text: She will star alongside Liev Schreiber in the upcoming film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel "Across the River and into the Trees".


title: Andy Rourke

text: Andrew Michael Rourke (born 17 January 1964) is an English musician, best known as the bassist of the Smiths. He is known for his melodic approach to bass playing.


title: Andy Rourke

text: Rourke's father was Irish while his mother was English. He received an acoustic guitar from his parents when he was seven years old. At the age of 11 he befriended the young John Maher (soon to be Johnny Marr) with whom he shared an interest in music. The pair spent lunch breaks in school jamming and playing on their guitars. When Marr and Rourke formed a band, he invited Rourke (still then a guitarist) to try on bass, which he fell in love with and has stuck with ever since.


title: Andy Rourke

text: Rourke left school when he was 15. He passed through a series of menial jobs and played guitar and bass in various rock bands, as well as in the short-lived funk band Freak Party, with his schoolfriend Johnny Marr.


title: Andy Rourke

text: Marr later teamed up with Morrissey to form the Smiths. Rourke joined the band after its first gig, and remained through most of its existence. Suffering from heroin addiction, he was sacked from the band in early 1986, rejoining two weeks later just before they released "The Queen Is Dead". In his absence, second guitarist Craig Gannon joined the band. Marr described Rourke's contribution to that album as "something no other bass player could match". The Smiths released "Strangeways, Here We Come" in 1987 to critical acclaim, but split soon after.


title: Andy Rourke

text: Immediately after the break-up, Rourke and Smiths drummer Mike Joyce played with Sinéad O'Connor – Rourke (but not Joyce) appears on the album "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" (1990). Along with Craig Gannon, they provided the rhythm section for two singles by former Smiths singer Morrissey – "Interesting Drug" and "The Last of the Famous International Playboys" (both 1989). Rourke also played bass on Morrissey's "November Spawned a Monster" and "Piccadilly Palare" (both 1990) and composed the music for Morrissey's songs "Yes, I Am Blind" (the B-side of "Ouija Board, Ouija Board", 1989); "Girl Least Likely To" (a B-side on the 12-inch single of "November Spawned a Monster"; also released as a bonus track on the 1997 reissue of "Viva Hate"); and "Get Off the Stage" (the B-side of "Piccadilly Palare").


title: Andy Rourke

text: Rourke has also played and recorded with the Pretenders (appearing on some of the tracks on 1994's "Last of the Independents"); Killing Joke, Badly Drawn Boy (with whom Rourke toured for two years), Aziz Ibrahim (formerly of the Stone Roses), and ex-Oasis guitarist Bonehead as Moondog One, which also included Mike Joyce and Craig Gannon. Rourke also played bass for Ian Brown, both on tour and on Brown's album "The World Is Yours".


title: Andy Rourke

text: Rourke and Joyce started legal proceedings against Morrissey and Marr over royalties. Short on money due to his heroin addiction, Rourke settled out of court for £83,000 and 10% of future royalties while relinquishing all further claims; Joyce pursued the claim until 1996 and was awarded substantially more in court. Having spent the settlement, Rourke later found himself being declared bankrupt following a petition of the Inland Revenue on 25 January 1999.


title: Andy Rourke

text: Rourke, his then-manager Nova Rehman, his production company, Great Northern Productions, and others organised Manchester v Cancer, a series of concerts to benefit cancer research, later known simply as Versus Cancer. The initiative was prompted when Rehman's father and sister were diagnosed with the disease. The first Manchester v Cancer concert took place in January 2006. It featured a reunion between Rourke and his former Smiths bandmate Johnny Marr, who performed one song together. The second Manchester v Cancer concert took place in March 2007. Rourke performed with former Oasis guitarist Bonehead's band Elektrik Milk. Rourke was less involved in organising the third concert in February 2008 or the fourth in December 2009.


title: Andy Rourke

text: Rourke formed Freebass with bass players Mani (ex-the Stone Roses) and Peter Hook (ex-New Order) in 2007 and remained active in the group until August 2010. Early in 2009, he moved to New York City, where he has a programme on East Village Radio and works as a club DJ with Olé Koretsky under the name Jetlag. This led to Rourke and Koretsky forming the band D.A.R.K. with singer Dolores O'Riordan from The Cranberries. The trio released their debut album, "Science Agrees" on 9 September 2016.


title: Andy Rourke

text: Throughout his career, Rourke has used a Fender Precision Bass, Squier Precision Bass, Fender Jazz Bass, and a Yamaha BB2000; for amplification, he has used Peavey Mark III Head with Ampeg SVT cabinet and Trace Elliot GP-11.


title: Nasal septum

text: The nasal septum () separates the left and right airways of the nasal cavity, dividing the two nostrils.


title: Nasal septum

text: The fleshy external end of the nasal septum is called the columella or columella nasi, and is made up of cartilage and soft tissue. The nasal septum contains bone and hyaline cartilage. It is normally about 2 mm thick.


title: Nasal septum

text: The lowest part of the septum is a narrow strip of bone that projects from the maxilla and the palatine bones, and is the length of the septum. This strip of bone is called the maxillary crest; it articulates in front with the septal nasal cartilage, and at the back with the vomer. The maxillary crest is described in the anatomy of the nasal septum as having a maxillary component and a palatine component.


title: Nasal septum

text: At an early period, the septum of the nose consists of a plate of cartilage, known as the "ethmovomerine cartilage".


title: Nasal septum

text: The postero-superior part of this cartilage is ossified to form the perpendicular plate of the ethmoid; its antero-inferior portion persists as the septal cartilage, while the vomer is ossified in the membrane covering its postero-inferior part.


title: Nasal septum

text: Two ossification centers, one on either side of the middle line, appear about the eighth week of fetal life in this part of the membrane, and hence the vomer consists primarily of two lamellae.


title: Nasal septum

text: About the third month these unite below, and thus a deep groove is formed in which the cartilage is lodged.


title: Nasal septum

text: As growth proceeds, the union of the lamellae extends upward and forward, and at the same time the intervening plate of cartilage undergoes absorption.


title: Nasal septum

text: By the onset of puberty the lamellae are almost completely united to form a median plate, but evidence of the bilaminar origin of the bone is seen in the everted alae of its upper border and in the groove on its anterior margin.


title: Nasal septum

text: The nasal septum can depart from the centre line of the nose in a condition that is known as a deviated septum caused by trauma. However, it is normal to have a slight deviation to one side. The septum generally stays in the midline until about the age of seven, at which point it will frequently deviate to the right. An operation to straighten the nasal septum is known as a septoplasty.


title: Nasal septum

text: A perforated nasal septum can be caused by an ulcer, trauma due to an inserted object, long-term exposure to welding fumes, or cocaine use. There is a procedure that can be of help to those suffering from perforated septum. A silicone button can be inserted in the hole to close the open sore.


title: Nasal septum

text: The nasal septum can be affected by both benign tumors such as fibromas, and hemangiomas, and malignant tumors such as squamous cell carcinoma.


title: Nasal septum

text: A nasal septum piercing is usually carried out through the fleshy columella close to the end of the nasal septum.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: "Box Cutter" is the fourth season premiere of the American television drama series "Breaking Bad", and its 34th episode overall. Written by series creator Vince Gilligan and directed by Adam Bernstein, "Box Cutter" originally aired on AMC in the United States on July 17, 2011. The narrative follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and his partner Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) as they face repercussions from drug kingpin Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) for killing Gale Boetticher at the end of the previous season. Meanwhile, Skyler White (Anna Gunn) breaks into her husband Walter's condominium to investigate his sudden disappearance, and Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt) struggles to help Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) recover from his injuries.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: The episode marked the final regular performances of actors David Costabile and Jeremiah Bitsui as Gale and Victor. Gilligan considered changing the episode based on audience responses to the third-season finale, "Full Measure", on whether Gale would be killed or not, but ultimately decided against it. During a twist scene in "Box Cutter", Gus slices his loyal henchman Victor's throat with Gale's utility knife right before Walt and Jesse's eyes. Esposito said he was concerned about filming the scene "without really hurting my spirit and my soul", and he concentrated so hard that he remained silent and focused during filming, rarely speaking to others on set. The scene was so bloody it made Cranston's daughter faint during a screening.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: A major theme of "Box Cutter", and the entire fourth season, involved Walter's gradual change into a darker character who becomes more proactively violent and dangerous. The episode also illustrates Jesse's moral decline and feelings of guilt over his killing of Gale, and Skyler's growing involvement in Walter's illegal activities. The episode received positive reviews and was watched by 2.58 million households, according to Nielsen Media Research. Until the fifth-season premiere, "Box Cutter" was the most watched "Breaking Bad" episode in the series' history and the third-highest-rated season premiere for any AMC show, after the first two seasons' premieres of "The Walking Dead". In 2012, Gilligan received the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Episodic Drama for his work on this episode. This marked his second win for individual work on "Breaking Bad", along with his award from the pilot episode in 2009.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: In a flashback, methamphetamine manufacturer Gale Boetticher excitedly sets up equipment in an underground meth superlab for Gus Fring. Gale asks Gus about the blue meth being produced by chemist Walter White. Gus explains he has reservations about hiring Walt, but Gale insists Gus hire him because of his superior product.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: In the present, following Walt's order, Jesse Pinkman has killed Gale to foil Gus' plot to kill them. Gus' henchman Victor arrives at Gale's apartment and finds him dead, surrounded by neighbors who have called the police. Victor finds Jesse sitting in his car and forces him to return to the lab, where Mike Ehrmantraut is holding Walt. Mike is concerned that Victor was seen at Gale's apartment and calls to inform Gus. Victor realizes his own position is precarious and reveals he observed Walt and Jesse's work by starting to cook meth himself, hoping to prove his value to Gus.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: Skyler White observes Walt's car in her driveway and moves it a few blocks away so Walter White Jr. will not see it. She calls Saul Goodman to ask where Walt is, but Saul is paranoid because of Walt's falling out with Gus and is busy checking his office for listening devices. Skyler breaks into Walt's condominium with the aid of a locksmith but finds little of interest. Marie Schrader struggles to maintain her composure while caring for a belligerent Hank Schrader, who is still bedridden after the attempt on his life.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: Gus arrives at the lab but says nothing. Walt launches into a rambling monologue, hoping to convince Gus he needs Walt and Jesse alive. Gus maintains his silence while changing into hazmat gear and picking up the box cutter Gale used during the lab setup. He startles everyone by slicing Victor's throat, then coldly eyes Walt and Jesse to ensure his message was received. He quietly returns to his street clothes, then walks out, pausing only to say, "Get back to work."


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: Walt and Jesse use hydrofluoric acid to dispose of Victor's body, the gun that killed Gale, and the box cutter. During breakfast, Walt insists Gale's death was necessary, but expresses concern that Gus will kill them at his next opportunity. Jesse believes it will be too much trouble for Gus to find another drug manufacturer, though Gus might make them wish they were dead. Police investigate Gale's apartment but overlook his lab notes.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: "Box Cutter", the fourth season premiere of "Breaking Bad", was directed by Adam Bernstein and written by series creator Vince Gilligan. Filmed in January 2011, the episode was edited by Skip Macdonald, one of a handful of editors who have regularly worked on the series. It was broadcast on July 17, 2011, and was the first original "Breaking Bad" episode in 13 months, since the third season finale episode "Full Measure" aired in June 2010. AMC officials delayed the fourth-season premiere until July because they felt the Nielsen ratings would be better during the summer. While "Breaking Bad" scripts are generally 50 pages long, the screenplay to "Box Cutter" was 43 pages long, and Gilligan was originally concerned because he did not want to stretch out the episode simply to pad the running time. "Full Measure" ended with Jesse's pulling a gun on Gale and firing directly into the screen, with Gale's death not visibly revealed on-screen. This led to wide speculation among fans and reviewers that Jesse did not actually kill Gale, but rather aimed away from him and fired the gun. This speculation continued up until the original broadcast of "Box Cutter", which confirmed Jesse indeed killed Gale. Gilligan said he never intended for that scene to be a cliffhanger and he thought it clearly conveyed that Gale had died.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: "Box Cutter" featured the final regular appearances of recurring "Breaking Bad" actors David Costabile and Jeremiah Bitsui who, respectively, played Gale Boetticher and Victor. Stand-up comedian Lavell Crawford also made his first of several guest appearances in "Box Cutter" as Huell, Saul's new bodyguard. Gilligan stated that he named the episode "Box Cutter" mainly because "it just sounded like a cool title", but also because he was concerned that the climax of the episode took so long to build to that, by calling it "Box Cutter", "Perhaps I was thinking on some level, 'We'd better let the audience know that there's something at the end of this.'" Although the "Breaking Bad" staff always intended for Gale to be killed, the audience reaction to "Full Measure" made Gilligan and the "Breaking Bad" writing staff reconsider whether their plans were the best ones. However, Gilligan said they instead decided to follow their original plan, saying "At the end of the day, the choice we made for how to press forward was the choice we felt was the most honest, and the one that would best continue the story."


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: Giancarlo Esposito said that when he first read the script for "Box Cutter", he was so shocked that he had to put it down and walk away from it. Esposito said he did not want to "take any of [the scene] home with me" and had "some deep concern about being able to do it and coming out of it unscathed, without really hurting my spirit and my soul". He worked through these concerns by justifying Gus' actions in that, by killing Victor, he was protecting everyone else who works for him. Nevertheless, he said it was "a difficult moment for me" to slit Victor's throat, and that during one take he tried to hush the character to make him die more calmly. That scene took two days to film, and Esposito remained silent and focused during filming, rarely speaking to the others on set. The boots he was originally given were too large and he was concerned that he would slip, which would be out of character for Gus, who was otherwise completely calm and in control. A costume designer quickly procured the right-sized boots for him.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: In writing the script, the "Breaking Bad" staff decided early on that Gus would not speak much during the scene because they felt it was more dramatic that way and more appropriate for his character. Esposito felt the scene was a pivotal moment not only for his character, but for Gus' relationship with Walter, and a warning that Walter should continue to operate Gus' way or risk death. Regarding his character's murder of Victor, Esposito said: "This had to be done. Someone did something, they got seen. ... It was about survival. This had to be done, but I could do it in a way that also sent a message to the people who weren't listening." Bryan Cranston said he was not expecting the episode to take the direction it did. He called the scene "painful, but beautifully crafted, and reasonably so", and commented on the contrast between Gus' calm demeanor and Walter's "tap-dancing to stay alive". Cranston said of Esposito's performance, "When he plays that bad character, his eyes go dead, and all it takes is to look into his eyes." Gilligan said although Gus' actions in the scene were scripted, "You'd be surprised how little I talked to Giancarlo about how he played that part ... This is a man with amazing instincts."


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: Jeremiah Bitsui sprained his ankle during filming of the scene when Walter and Jesse shoved his character's corpse into a barrel to dispose of it with hydrofluoric acid. Following that scene, Jesse lifts the barrel with a forklift and it is lit in a way that the barrel can be seen through. This was accomplished by back-lighting the barrel and tying to the bottom of it, which staff members then moved and twisted outside of the view of the camera to create the lighting effect.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: A major theme of "Box Cutter" involves Walter's gradual change from an unwitting participant in a drug-dealing enterprise into a man more comfortable with a life of crime who embraces his darker side and becomes more proactively violent and dangerous. This development began during the latter episodes of the third season and would continue to be a major theme throughout the fourth season. The episode also introduced the ongoing theme of Jesse's moral decline and self guilt over his killing of Gale. Aaron Paul said of this, "Jesse's much more raw this season. He's very distant, and he's turned to just utter chaos and destruction to keep his mind busy. When he's left alone in his own thoughts, that's when things can get kind of dangerous and scary for Jesse."


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: The scene when Walter pleads with Gus demonstrates the paternal sense of protectiveness Walter has developed for Jesse. During that scene, Walter tells Gus, "You kill me, you have nothing. You kill Jesse, you don't have me." Jesse is visibly moved by the statement, which Aaron Paul described as "the first moment that Jesse realizes that Walt's loyalty is to Jesse." "Box Cutter" also illustrated Skyler's growing involvement in Walter's illegal activities through the subplot in which she lies to a locksmith to break into Walter's house, going so far as to use her baby as a prop in her facade. After Skyler breaks into Walter's apartment, she finds the plastic eyeball of a teddy bear that has been part of the series since the second season. The eye has long been used as a symbol to identify Walter's gradual descent into a life of crime, and Skyler's discovery of it symbolizes her own similar descent.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: During a scene when Gale's neighbor calls police to report his murder, a clock in Gale's apartment reads 10:13. This is a deliberate reference to the number 1013, which frequently appeared in "The X-Files", where Vince Gilligan worked as a writer and producer and Bryan Cranston as an actor. It refers to the name of "X-Files" creator Chris Carter's production company Ten Thirteen Productions, which in turn is a reference to Chris Carter's birthday, October 13. A copy of "Everything's Eventual", a collection of short stories by Stephen King, can be seen in Gale's apartment. After Walter and Jesse are released by Gus, they eat lunch at Denny's, a coffee shop and family restaurant chain. During this scene, they are wearing matching T-shirts with country music singer Kenny Rogers on them. The T-shirts are deliberately not explained in the episode, but Vince Gilligan said he believed Mike simply bought the first articles of clean clothing he could find for Walter and Jesse after their clothes were soaked with Victor's blood. During the final scene of "Box Cutter", when Walter walks back to his car, the Alex Ebert song "Truth" plays in the background.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: "Box Cutter" was first publicly shown on June 28, 2011, at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. During the scene when Gus killed Victor, Bryan Cranston's daughter Taylor fainted in her seat inside the theater at the sight of all the blood. This prompted theater officials to briefly interrupt the screening and ask for a doctor in the audience, causing a brief panic among the crowd. The violent scenes in "Box Cutter" proved so bloody that AMC included a disclaimer warning about the violence at the start of the episode and after the commercial break halfway through the episode.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: In its original American broadcast, "Box Cutter" was seen by an estimated 2.58 million household viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. It was the most watched "Breaking Bad" episode in the series and the second highest rated season premiere for any AMC show, falling behind only the series premiere of "The Walking Dead", which drew 5.3 million household viewers. It was also a 32 percent increase in viewership compared to the third-season premiere, "No Más". "Box Cutter" performed especially strong with men between ages 18 and 34, among whom viewership was up 67 percent compared to the third-season premiere. The episode was seen by 1.4 million household viewers in both the 18 to 49 and the 25 to 54 age groups, a 21 percent increase in the former group and a 26 percent increase in the latter.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: "Box Cutter" received critical acclaim. Alan Sepinwall of HitFix said the episode demonstrated how effective the creators of "Breaking Bad" are at manipulating the emotions of their viewers. Sepinwall described the story as "remarkably simple" but the execution as extremely effective, and he called the amount of screen time dedicated to Gus calmly changing his clothes before and after killing Victor "a move so ballsy and so brilliant I actually started giggling the second time they did it". "Time" magazine writer James Poniewozik said the episode demonstrated how effective "Breaking Bad" can be even with a minimal amount of dialogue, such as Gus' silence during his scene in the lab, and Jesse's wordlessness throughout the episode as he processed what he had done to Gale. He also praised the color scheme of the blood-red meth lab as an illustrator of Walter and Jesse's descent into hell. "Entertainment Weekly" writer Ken Tucker said of the episode, "Its eloquent silences, its breath-taking pictorial compositions ... these are pleasures that transcend 98% of television's usual attempts at dirty realism or fashionable pessimism". Kim Potts of TV Squad called Gus' killing of Victor "one of the more jarring scenes in "Breaking Bad" history". The Faster Times writer Craig McQuinn called it "one of the most intense episodes I've ever seen", and said it solidified Gus' standing as "one of the greatest TV antagonists I've ever seen". Matt Zoller Seitz of Salon.com compared the filmmaking in "Box Cutter" to that of works by Alfred Hitchcock and the Coen brothers, and called the best example of television's ability to "take an elastic approach to narrative and let certain incidents or moments expand to fill up most or all of an episode" since "The Suitcase", an episode of the television series "Mad Men".


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: Seth Amitin of IGN called it a minimalist, deliberately paced episode but said it was never boring due to the excellent acting, dialogue, and suspense which illustrates "just how quickly this show lost its innocence". He also said the subplots involving Skyler, Hank, and Marie kept the episode's pace well. "Los Angeles Times" writer Emily VanDerWerff praised the performance of Aaron Paul despite his almost complete lack of dialogue throughout the episode and felt the script raised interesting contrasts between Walt, who acts impulsively and rash while captured, and Gus, who seems calm and in control. However, she said it felt like Victor was killed rather than Walter or Jesse simply because the writers could not kill the two main protagonists. Michael Arbeiter of Hollywood.com called it a "great and intriguing way to start the season" and particularly praised Aaron Paul, who he said was "phenomenal" despite barely speaking any dialogue in the episode. However, he had "mixed feelings" about the Gus character's evolution from a behind-the-scenes criminal to a hands-on killer. Jessica Johnson of "Time Out Chicago" called it an "exquisite exercise in tension" that builds a "slow crescendo of what looks to be an impressively strong season". Andy Vineberg of the "Bucks County Courier Times" called it "a great start for a show that just keeps getting better". He praised the dark humor that kept the tension of the show balanced and particularly complimented the pre-credits scene and the ramifications it had for the show and its characters. "RedEye" writer Curt Wagner found that the cinematography, pacing and tension were so effective in "Box Cutter", that "I think I broke a sweat just watching". "Paste" magazine writer Brent Koepp praised the transformation of Walter, and said few other shows would risk making their protagonist so unlikeable. Koepp called the climactic scene with Gus "brilliant" and complimented the script for taking its time in building the tension.


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: Matt Richenthal of "TV Fanatic" praised the episode for its effectiveness in scenes featuring little dialogue, particularly with Jesse and Gus, claiming, "No show does silence like "Breaking Bad"." He also complimented Cranston's desperate monologue while trying to convince Gus not to kill him, claiming it provided a deep insight into Walt's character and his inability to accept responsibility for his actions. Zap2it writer Rick Porter called the scene with Gus killing Victor a "master class in building tension" due to the strong writing, direction and acting, particularly by Esposito. Scott Wampler of Collider.com called it "a fantastic, bloody, shocking season premiere, one of the best in the show's history". He particularly praised Esposito's performance and suggested it could make the actor worthy of contention for an Emmy Award. "BlackBook" magazine writer Chris Mohney strongly praised Esposito's performance, and described his silence and calm during the climactic scene as "one of the great recent moments of TV menace". June Thomas of Slate magazine called it a "fine opening episode" that did not advance the plot significantly but "served as an artful reminder of where the characters stand psychologically". Thomas said she believed the episode demonstrated that Walter is in fact a weak man, comparing his useless pleas to Gus to his ineffective attempts to mislead Skyler about his drug-manufacturing activities in earlier seasons. Not all reviews were positive. Jessica Grose, also of Slate magazine, said while she prefers episodes that mixed its darker aspects with black humor, "Box Cutter" was "all claustrophobia and fear". "The Philadelphia Inquirer" columnist David Hiltbrand condemned the violent scene with Victor's death, which he called "totally gratuitous ... serv[ing] no plot or character purpose".


title: Box Cutter (Breaking Bad)

text: In 2019 "The Ringer" ranked "Box Cutter" as the 5th best out of the 62 total "Breaking Bad" episodes.


title: Bay

text: A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a narrow entrance. A fjord is an elongated bay formed by glacial action.


title: Bay

text: A bay can be the estuary of a river, such as the Chesapeake Bay, an estuary of the Susquehanna River. Bays may also be nested within each other; for example, James Bay is an arm of Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada. Some large bays, such as the Bay of Bengal and Hudson Bay, have varied marine geology.


title: Bay

text: The land surrounding a bay often reduces the strength of winds and blocks waves. Bays may have as wide a variety of shoreline characteristics as other shorelines. In some cases, bays have beaches, which "are usually characterized by a steep upper foreshore with a broad, flat fronting terrace". Bays were significant in the history of human settlement because they provided safe places for fishing. Later they were important in the development of sea trade as the safe anchorage they provide encouraged their selection as ports.


title: Bay

text: The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines a bay as a well-marked indentation in the coastline, whose penetration is in such proportion to the width of its mouth as to contain land-locked waters and constitute more than a mere curvature of the coast. An indentation, however, shall not be regarded as a bay unless its area is as large as (or larger than) that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across the mouth of that indentation — otherwise it would be referred to as a bight.


title: Bay

text: There are various ways in which bays can form. The largest bays have developed through plate tectonics. As the super-continent Pangaea broke up along curved and indented fault lines, the continents moved apart and left large bays; these include the Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bay of Bengal, which is the world's largest bay.


title: Bay

text: Bays also form through coastal erosion by rivers and glaciers. A bay formed by a glacier is a fjord. Rias are created by rivers and are characterised by more gradual slopes. Deposits of softer rocks erode more rapidly, forming bays, while harder rocks erode less quickly, leaving headlands.


title: VP9

text: VP9 is the successor to VP8 and competes mainly with MPEG's High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265).


title: VP9

text: At first, VP9 was mainly used on Google's video platform YouTube. The emergence of the Alliance for Open Media, and its support for the ongoing development of the successor AV1, of which Google is a part, led to growing interest in the format.


title: VP9

text: In contrast to HEVC, VP9 support is common among modern web browsers (see HTML5 video § Browser support). Android has supported VP9 since version 4.4 KitKat, while iOS/iPadOS added support for VP9 in iOS/iPadOS 14.


title: VP9

text: Parts of the format are covered by patents held by Google. The company grants free usage of its own related patents based on reciprocity, i.e. as long as the user does not engage in patent litigations.


title: VP9

text: VP9 is the last official iteration of the TrueMotion series of video formats that Google bought in 2010 for $134 million together with the company On2 Technologies that created it.


title: VP9

text: The development of VP9 started in the second half of 2011 under the development names of "Next Gen Open Video" ("NGOV") and "VP-Next". The design goals for VP9 included reducing the bit rate by 50% compared to VP8 while maintaining the same video quality, and aiming for better compression efficiency than the MPEG High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. In June 2013 the "profile 0" of VP9 was finalized, and two months later Google's Chrome browser was released with support for VP9 video playback. In October of that year a native VP9 decoder was added to FFmpeg, and to Libav six weeks later. Mozilla added VP9 support to Firefox in March 2014. In 2014 Google added two high bit depth profiles: profile 2 and profile 3.


title: VP9

text: In 2013 an updated version of the WebM format was published, featuring support for VP9 together with Opus audio.


title: VP9

text: In March 2013, the MPEG Licensing Administration dropped an announced assertion of disputed patent claims against VP8 and its successors after the United States Department of Justice started to investigate whether it was acting to unfairly stifle competition.


title: VP9

text: Throughout, Google has worked with hardware vendors to get VP9 support into silicon. In January 2014, Ittiam, in collaboration with ARM and Google, demonstrated its VP9 decoder for ARM Cortex devices. Using GPGPU techniques, the decoder was capable of 1080p at 30fps on an Arndale Board. In early 2015 Nvidia announced VP9 support in its Tegra X1 SoC, and VeriSilicon announced VP9 Profile 2 support in its Hantro G2v2 decoder IP.


title: VP9

text: In April 2015 Google released a significant update to its libvpx library, with version 1.4.0 adding support for 10-bit and 12-bit bit depth, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 chroma subsampling, and VP9 multithreaded decoding/encoding.


title: VP9

text: In December 2015, Netflix published a draft proposal for including VP9 video in an MP4 container with MPEG Common Encryption.


title: VP9

text: In January 2016, Ittiam demonstrated an OpenCL based VP9 encoder. The encoder is targeting ARM Mali mobile GPUs and was demonstrated on a Samsung Galaxy S6.


title: VP9

text: VP9 support was added to Microsoft's web browser Edge. It is present in development releases starting with EdgeHTML 14.14291 and due to be officially released in summer 2016.


title: VP9

text: In March 2017, Ittiam announced the completion of a project to enhance the encoding speed of libvpx. The speed improvement was said to be 50-70%, and the code "publicly available as part of libvpx".


title: VP9

text: VP9 is customized for video resolutions greater than 1080p (such as UHD) and also enables lossless compression.


title: VP9

text: The VP9 format supports the following color spaces: Rec. 601, Rec. 709, Rec. 2020, SMPTE-170, SMPTE-240, and sRGB.


title: VP9

text: VP9 supports HDR video using hybrid log–gamma (HLG) and perceptual quantizer (PQ) transfer functions.


title: VP9

text: An early comparison that took varying encoding speed into account showed x265 to narrowly beat libvpx at the very highest quality (slowest encoding) whereas libvpx was superior at any other encoding speed, by SSIM.


title: VP9

text: In a subjective quality comparison conducted in 2014 featuring the reference encoders for HEVC (HM 15.0), MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (JM 18.6), and VP9 (libvpx 1.2.0 with preliminary VP9 support), VP9, like H.264, required about two times the bitrate to reach video quality comparable to HEVC, while with synthetic imagery VP9 was close to HEVC.


title: VP9

text: By contrast, another subjective comparison from 2014 concluded that at higher quality settings HEVC and VP9 were tied at a 40 to 45% bitrate advantage over H.264.


title: VP9

text: Netflix, after a large test in August 2016, concluded that libvpx was 20% less efficient than x265, but by October the same year also found that tweaking encoding parameters could "reduce or even reverse gap between VP9 and HEVC". At NAB 2017, Netflix shared that they had switched to the "EVE" encoder, which according to their studies offered better two-pass rate control and was 8% more efficient than libvpx.


title: VP9

text: An offline encoder comparison between libvpx, two HEVC encoders and x264 in May 2017 by Jan Ozer of Streaming Media Magazine, with encoding parameters supplied or reviewed by each encoder vendor (Google, MulticoreWare and MainConcept respectively), and using Netflix's VMAF objective metric, concluded that "VP9 and both HEVC codecs produce very similar performance" and "Particularly at lower bitrates, both HEVC codecs and VP9 deliver substantially better performance than H.264".


title: VP9

text: An encoding speed versus efficiency comparison of the reference implementation in libvpx, x264 and x265 was made by an FFmpeg developer in September 2015: By SSIM index, libvpx was mostly superior to x264 across the range of comparable encoding speeds, but the main benefit was at the slower end of "x264@veryslow" (reaching a sweet spot of 30–40% bitrate improvement within twice as slow as this), whereas x265 only became competitive with libvpx around 10 times as slow as "x264@veryslow". It was concluded that libvpx and x265 were both capable of the claimed 50% bitrate improvement over H.264, but only at 10–20 times the encoding time of x264. Judged by the objective quality metric VQM in early 2015, the VP9 reference encoder delivered video quality on par with the best HEVC implementations.


title: VP9

text: A decoder comparison by the same developer showed 10% faster decoding for ffvp9 than ffh264 for same-quality video, or "identical" at same bitrate. It also showed that the implementation can make a difference, concluding that "ffvp9 beats libvpx consistently by 25–50%".


title: VP9

text: Another decoder comparison indicated 10–40 percent higher CPU load than H.264 (but does not say whether this was with ffvp9 or libvpx), and that on mobile, the Ittiam demo player was about 40 percent faster than the Chrome browser at playing VP9.


title: VP9

text: There are several variants of the VP9 format (known as "coding profiles"), which successively allow more features; "profile 0" is the basic variant, requiring the least from a hardware implementation:


title: VP9

text: VP9 is a traditional block-based transform coding format. The bitstream format is relatively simple compared to formats that offer similar bitrate efficiency like HEVC.


title: VP9

text: VP9 has many design improvements compared to VP8. Its biggest improvement is support for the use of coding units of 64×64 pixels. This is especially useful with high-resolution video. Also, the prediction of motion vectors was improved. In addition to VP8's four modes (average/"DC", "true motion", horizontal, vertical), VP9 supports six oblique directions for linear extrapolation of pixels in intra-frame prediction.


title: VP9

text: In order to enable some parallel processing of frames, video frames can be split along coding unit boundaries into up to four rows of 256 to 4096 pixels wide evenly spaced tiles with each tile column coded independently. This is mandatory for video resolutions in excess of 4096 pixels. A tile header contains the tile size in bytes so decoders can skip ahead and decode each tile row in a separate thread. The image is then divided into coding units called superblocks of 64×64 pixels which are adaptively subpartitioned in a quadtree coding structure. They can be subdivided either horizontally or vertically or both; square (sub)units can be subdivided recursively down to 4×4 pixel blocks. Subunits are coded in raster scan order: left to right, top to bottom.


title: VP9

text: Starting from each key frame, decoders keep 8 frames buffered to be used as reference frames or to be shown later. Transmitted frames signal which buffer to overwrite and can optionally be decoded into one of the buffers without being shown. The encoder can send a minimal frame that just triggers one of the buffers to be displayed ("skip frame"). Each inter frame can reference up to three of the buffered frames for temporal prediction. Up to two of those reference frames can be used in each coding block to calculate a sample data prediction, using spatially displaced (motion compensation) content from a reference frame or an average of content from two reference frames ("compound prediction mode"). The (ideally small) remaining difference (delta encoding) from the computed prediction to the actual image content is transformed using a DCT or ADST (for edge blocks) and quantized.


title: VP9

text: Something like a b-frame can be coded while preserving the original frame order in the bitstream using a structure named superframes. Hidden alternate reference frames can be packed together with an ordinary inter frame and a skip frame that triggers display of previous hidden altref content from its reference frame buffer right after the accompanying p-frame.


title: VP9

text: VP9 enables lossless encoding by transmitting at the lowest quantization level (q index 0) an additional 4×4-block encoded Walsh–Hadamard transformed (WHT) residue signal.


title: VP9

text: In order to be seekable, raw VP9 bitstreams have to be encapsulated in a container format, for example Matroska (.mkv), its derived WebM format (.webm) or the older minimalistic Indeo video file (IVF) format which is traditionally supported by libvpx. VP9 is identified as codice_1 in WebM and codice_2 in MP4, adhering to respective naming conventions.


title: VP9

text: Adobe Flash, which traditionally used VPx formats up to VP7, was never upgraded to VP8 or VP9, but instead to H.264. Therefore, VP9 often penetrated corresponding web applications only with the gradual shift from Flash to HTML5 technology, which was still somewhat immature when VP9 was introduced.


title: VP9

text: Trends towards UHD resolutions, higher color depth and wider gamuts are driving a shift towards new, specialized video formats. With the clear development perspective and support from the industry demonstrated by the founding of the Alliance for Open Media, as well as the pricey and complex licensing situation of HEVC it is expected that users of the hitherto leading MPEG formats will often switch to the royalty-free alternative formats of the VPx/AVx series instead of upgrading to HEVC.


title: VP9

text: A main user of VP9 is Google's popular video platform YouTube, which offers VP9 video at all resolutions along with Opus audio in the WebM file format, through DASH streaming.


title: VP9

text: Another early adopter was Wikipedia (specifically Wikimedia Commons, which hosts multimedia files across Wikipedia's subpages and languages). Wikipedia endorses open and royalty-free multimedia formats. As of 2016, the three accepted video formats are VP9, VP8 and Theora.


title: VP9

text: Since December 2016, Netflix has used VP9 encoding for their catalog, alongside H.264 and HEVC. As of February 2020, AV1 has been started to be adopted for mobile devices, not unlike how VP9 has started on the platform.


title: VP9

text: Stadia uses VP9 for video game streaming up to 4k on supported hardware like the Chromecast Ultra, supported mobile phones as well as computers.


title: VP9

text: A series of cloud encoding services offer VP9 encoding, including Amazon, Bitmovin, Brightcove, castLabs, JW Player, Telestream, and Wowza.


title: VP9

text: Encoding.com has offered VP9 encoding since Q4 2016, which amounted to a yearly average of 11% popularity for VP9 among its customers that year.


title: VP9

text: In March 2016 an estimated 65 to 75% of browsers in use on desktop and notebook systems were able to play VP9 videos in HTML5 webpages, based on data from StatCounter.


title: VP9

text: VP9 is supported in all major open source media player software, including VLC, MPlayer/MPlayer2/MPV, Kodi, MythTV, and FFplay.


title: VP9

text: Android has had VP9 software decoding since version 4.4 "KitKat". For a list of consumer electronics with hardware support, including TVs, smartphones, set top boxes and game consoles, see webmproject.org's list.


title: VP9

text: The following chips, architectures, CPUs, GPUs and SoCs provide hardware acceleration of VP9. Some of these are known to have fixed function hardware, but this list also incorporates GPU or DSP based implementations – software implementations on non-CPU hardware. The latter category also serve the purpose of offloading the CPU, but power efficiency is not as good as the fixed function hardware (more comparable to well optimized SIMD aware software).


title: VP9

text: This is not a complete list. Further SoCs, as well as hardware IP vendors can be found at webmproject.org.


title: VP9

text: It has a single-pass and a two-pass encoding mode, but the single-pass mode is considered broken and does not offer effective control over the target bitrate.


title: VP9

text: FFmpeg's VP9 decoder takes advantage of a corpus of SIMD optimizations shared with other codecs to make it fast. A comparison made by an FFmpeg developer indicated that this was faster than libvpx, and compared to FFmpeg's h.264 decoder, "identical" performance for same-bitrate video, or about 10% faster for same-quality video.


title: VP9

text: In March 2019, Luxembourg-based Sisvel announced the formation of patent pools for VP9 and AV1. Members of the pools included JVCKenwood, NTT, Orange S.A., Philips, and Toshiba, all of whom were also licensing patents to the MPEG-LA for either the AVC, DASH, or the HEVC patent pools. A list of claimed patents was first published on 10 March 2020. This list contains over 650 patents.


title: VP9

text: Sisvel's prices are .24 Euros for display devices and .08 Euros for non-display devices using VP9, but would not seek royalties for encoded content. However, their license makes no exemption for software.


title: VP9

text: According to The WebM Project, Google does not plan to alter their current or upcoming usage plans of VP9 or AV1 even though they are aware of the patent pools, none of the licensors of the patent pools were involved in the development of VP9 or VP8, and third parties cannot be stopped from demanding licensing fees from any technology that is open-source, royalty-free, and/or free-of-charge.


title: VP9

text: On September 12, 2014, Google announced that development on VP10 had begun and that after the release of VP10 they planned to have an 18-month gap between releases of video formats. In August 2015, Google began to publish code for VP10.


title: VP9

text: However, Google decided to incorporate VP10 into AOMedia Video 1 (AV1). The AV1 codec was developed based on a combination of technologies from VP10, Daala (Xiph/Mozilla) and Thor (Cisco). Accordingly, Google has stated that they will not deploy VP10 internally nor officially release it, making VP9 the last of the VPx-based codecs to be released by Google.


title: Veranda

text: A veranda or verandah is a roofed, open-air gallery or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front and sides of the structure.


title: Veranda

text: Although the form "verandah" is correct and very common, some authorities prefer the version without an "h" (the "Concise Oxford English Dictionary" gives the "h" version as a variant and "The Guardian Style Guide" says


title: Veranda

text: The veranda has featured quite prominently in Australian vernacular architecture and first became widespread in colonial buildings during the 1850s. The Victorian Filigree architecture style is used by residential (particularly terraced houses in Australia and New Zealand) and commercial buildings (particularly hotels) across Australia and features decorative screens of wrought iron, cast iron "lace" or wood fretwork. The Queenslander is a style of residential construction in Queensland, Australia, which is adapted to subtropical climates and characterized in part by its large verandas, which sometimes encircle the entire house.


title: Veranda

text: In regions with heavy snowfall, especially Aomori and Niigata prefectures, structures called Gangi-Zukuri () have been developed since the Edo period. For example, the total length of Gangi in old Takada city is over 16 Kilometers.


title: Veranda

text: In Poland, the word "weranda" is commonly used for the unheated roofed annex to a house, without walls or with glass walls.


title: Veranda

text: The Creole townhouse in New Orleans, Louisiana, is also noted for its prominent use of verandas. In fact, most houses constructed in the Southern United States before the advent of air conditioning were built with a covered front porch or veranda.


title: Veranda

text: Spanish Colonial architecture (as well as the "Mission style" revivalist version that became popular in the Western United States in the early 1900s) commonly incorporates verandas, both on the exterior of buildings and, in cases of buildings with courtyards, along the interior walls of courtyards. In some cases, homes were constructed with every room opening into a courtyard veranda, rather than interior corridors or direct connections to other rooms.


title: Veranda

text: Being a warm, tropical country, porches were a natural idea in India. In North India the porch area is called the Otala, these structures are not only used too cool off, but also as a center of social life, where neighbors can talk and kids play, but also a religious center, where rituals and worship of the Gods can take place. The exact origin of the structure is not yet known, but it appears to date back at least 500 years, making it a well established Indian design.


title: Veranda

text: In Southern India, the term "thinnai" is used, and these structures are very common. This area serves a religious purpose in addition to a social one, and is the center of everyday life for many. Konkan's architecture is influenced by nature. It is sustainable and cost effective. In Konkan traditional architecture, the veranda is called "Otti", a semi-open space with low height seating covered with a permanent roof. It serves as a transition space leading to an enclosed environment. Sometimes the sides are covered by wooden jali walls. It offers temporary resting space to house members during the afternoon and evening time.


title: Veranda

text: Given its Portuguese, Dutch and British rule, many colonial Sri Lankan bungalows feature verandas. In the Sri Lankan Walauwa (a house once used by headmen under colonial rule) it is used as a space for leisure where families will spend time or read newspapers. Given the rarity of the architectural style in contemporary Sri Lanka houses with verandas are often featured in local films and dramas and symbolise a wealthy household.


title: Veranda

text: Often appear on the upper floor of the first - third generation of Tong Lau (shophouse) due to lack of space since the 19th century.


title: Railroad switch

text: A railroad switch (), turnout, or [set of] points () is a mechanical installation enabling railway trains to be guided from one track to another, such as at a railway junction or where a spur or siding branches off.


title: Railroad switch

text: The most common type of switch consists of a pair of linked tapering rails, known as "points" ("switch rails" or "point blades"), lying between the diverging outer rails (the "stock rails"). These points can be moved laterally into one of two positions to direct a train coming from the point blades toward the straight path or the diverging path. A train moving from the narrow end toward the point blades (i.e. it will be directed to one of the two paths, depending on the position of the points) is said to be executing a "facing-point movement".


title: Railroad switch

text: For many types of switch, a train coming from either of the converging directions will pass through the switch regardless of the position of the points, as the vehicle's wheels will force the points to move. Passage through a switch in this direction is known as a "trailing-point movement" and switches that allow this type of movement are called "trailable switches".


title: Railroad switch

text: A switch generally has a straight "through" track (such as the main-line) and a diverging route. The handedness of the installation is described by the side that the diverging track leaves. "Right-hand switches" have a diverging path to the right of the straight track, when coming from the point blades, and a "left-handed switch" has the diverging track leaving to the opposite side. In many cases, such as rail yards, many switches can be found in a short section of track, sometimes with switches going both to the right and left (although it is better to keep these separated as much as feasible). Sometimes a switch merely divides one track into two; at others, it serves as a connection between two or more parallel tracks, allowing a train to "switch" between them. In many cases, where a switch is supplied to leave a track, a second is supplied to allow the train to reenter the track some distance down the line; this allows the track to serve as a siding, allowing a train to get off the track to allow traffic to pass (this siding can either be a dedicated short length of track, or formed from a section of a second, continuous, parallel line), and also allows trains coming from either direction to switch between lines; otherwise, the only way for a train coming from the opposite direction to use a switch would be to stop, and reverse through the switch onto the other line, and then continue forwards (or stop, if it is being used as a siding).


title: Railroad switch

text: A "straight track" is not always present; for example, both tracks may curve, one to the left and one to the right (such as for a wye switch), or both tracks may curve, with differing radii, while still in the same direction.


title: Railroad switch

text: Simple single-bladed switches were used on early wooden railways to move wagons between tracks. As iron-railed plateways became more common in the eighteenth century, cast iron components were made to build switches with check rails. In 1797, John Curr described the system that he developed which used a single iron blade, hinged on a vertical pin that was tapered to lie against the plateway. By 1808, Curr's basic design was in common use.


title: Railroad switch

text: Prior to the widespread availability of electricity, switches at heavily travelled junctions were operated from a signal box constructed near the tracks through an elaborate system of rods and levers. The levers were also used to control railway signals to control the movement of trains over the points. Eventually, mechanical systems known as interlockings were introduced to make sure that a signal could only be set to allow a train to proceed over points when it was safe to do so. Purely mechanical interlockings were eventually developed into integrated systems with electric control. On some low-traffic branch lines, in self-contained marshalling yards, or on heritage railways, switches may still have the earlier type of interlocking.


title: Railroad switch

text: A railroad car's wheels are primarily guided along the tracks by coning of the wheels, rather than relying on the flanges located on the insides of the wheels. When the wheels reach the switch, the wheels are guided along the route determined by which of the two points is connected to the track facing the switch. In the illustration, if the left point is connected, the left wheel will be guided along the rail of that point, and the train will diverge to the right. If the right point is connected, the right wheel's flange will be guided along the rail of that point, and the train will continue along the straight track. Only one of the points may be connected to the facing track at any time; the two points are mechanically locked together to ensure that this is always the case.


title: Railroad switch

text: A mechanism is provided to move the points from one position to the other ("change the points"). Historically, this would require a lever to be moved by a human operator, and some switches are still controlled this way. However, most are now operated by a remotely controlled actuator called a point machine; this may employ an electric motor or a pneumatic or hydraulic actuator. This both allows for remote control and monitoring and for the use of stiffer, strong switches that would be too difficult to move by hand, yet allow for higher speeds.


title: Railroad switch

text: In a trailing-point movement (running through the switch in the wrong direction while they are set to turn off the track), the flanges on the wheels will force the points to the proper position. This is sometimes known as "running through the switch". Some switches are designed to be forced to the proper position without damage. Examples include variable switches, spring switches, and weighted switches.


title: Railroad switch

text: If a switch becomes worn or the operating rods become damaged, it is possible for the flange to "split the switch", and go through the switch in the direction other than what was expected. This happens when the flange strikes a small gap between the fixed rail and the set switch point (whichever is touching the main line); this forces the switch open, and the train is diverted down the incorrect track. This can either happen to the locomotive, in which case the whole train can be directed onto the wrong track, with potentially dangerous results, or it can occur at any point through the train, when a random truck is directed down a different track from the rest of the train; if this happens on the front truck of a car, the usual result is derailment, as the trailing truck of the preceding car attempts to go one way, while the leading truck of the following car tries to go another. If it happens to the trailing truck of a car, the front truck will follow one track, while the trailing truck follows a parallel line; this causes the whole car to "crab", or move sideways down the track (derailment often results eventually, due to the lateral forces applied when the train tries to brake or accelerate). This can have disastrous results if there is any obstacle between the lines, as the car will be propelled into it sideways, such as happened in the 1928 Times Square derailment. In some cases, the whole train behind the car will follow the errant car onto the other track; in others, only one or a few trucks are diverted, while the rest follow the correct track. In cases where it is a simple siding, rather than a continuous parallel track, the diverted truck(s) can travel the whole length of the siding until it turns back to the main track, where it performs a "trailing point movement", forces the switch open, and ends up back on the same track again, with only damage to the switches. This is far less likely in cases of diversion to a parallel track, since switches on both lines will often be interconnected, so to set the switch on the main line to straight-through will set the other switch to straight-through as well (otherwise there is a risk of turning off the track only to find the joining switch is set the wrong way, and running the train through it). Because derailments are expensive and very dangerous to life and limb, maintenance of switch points and other trackwork is essential, especially with faster trains. Another derailment that occurred due to a split switch is the ProRail Hilversum derailment on 15 January 2014.


title: Railroad switch

text: If the points are rigidly connected to the switch control mechanism, the control mechanism's linkages may be bent, requiring repair before the switch is again usable. For this reason, switches are normally set to the proper position before performing a trailing-point movement.


title: Railroad switch

text: Generally, switches are designed to be safely traversed at low speed. However, it is possible to modify the simpler types of switch to allow trains to pass at high speed. More complicated switch systems, such as double slips, are restricted to low-speed operation. On European high-speed lines, it is not uncommon to find switches where a speed of or more is allowed on the diverging branch. Switches were passed over at a speed of (straight) during the French world speed run of April 2007.


title: Railroad switch

text: The US Federal Railroad Administration has published the speed limits for higher-speed turnouts with  26.5 turnout that has speed limit of and  32.7 with speed limit of .


title: Railroad switch

text: Under cold weather conditions, snow and ice can prevent the proper movement of switch or frog point rails, essentially inhibiting the proper operation of railroad switches. Historically, railway companies have employees keep their railroad switches clear of snow and ice by sweeping the snow away using switch brooms (Basically wire brooms with a chisel attached onto the opposite end of the broom - quite similar to ice scrapers used today), or gas torches for melting ice and snow. Such operation are still used in some countries, especially for branch routes with only limited traffic (e.g. seasonal lines). Modern switches for heavily trafficked lines are typically equipped with switch heaters installed in the vicinity of their point rails so that the point rails will not be frozen onto the stock rail and can no longer move. These heaters may take the form of electric heating elements or gas burners mounted on the rail, a lineside burner blowing hot air through ducts, or other innovative methods (e.g. geothermal heat sink, etc.) to keep the point & stock rails above freezing temperatures. Where gas or electric heaters cannot be used due to logistic or economic constraints, anti-icing chemicals can sometimes be applied to create a barrier between the metal surfaces to prevent ice from forming between them (i.e. having frozen together by ice). Such approaches however, may not always be effective for extreme climates since these chemicals will be washed away over time, especially for heavily thrown switches that experience hundreds of throws daily.


title: Railroad switch

text: Heating alone may not always be enough to keep switches functioning under snowy conditions. Wet snow conditions, which generate particularly sticky snow and whiteout conditions, may occur at temperatures just below freezing, causing chunks of ice to accumulate on trains. When trains traverse over some switches, the shock, vibration, possibly in combination with slight heating caused by braking or a city microclimate, may cause the chunks of ice to fall off, jamming the switches. The heaters need time to melt the ice, so if service frequency is extremely high, there may not be enough time for the ice to melt before the next train arrives, which will then result in service disruptions. Possible solutions include installing higher capacity heaters, reducing the frequency of trains, or applying anti-icing chemicals like ethylene glycol to the trains.


title: Railroad switch

text: The divergence and length of a switch is determined by the angle of the frog (the point in the switch where two rails cross, see below) and the angle or curvature of the switch blades. The length and placement of the other components are determined from this using established formulas and standards. This divergence is measured as the number of units of length for a single unit of separation.


title: Railroad switch

text: In North America this is generally referred to as a switch's "number". For example, on a "number 12" switch, the rails are one unit apart at a distance of twelve units from the center of the frog.


title: Railroad switch

text: In the United Kingdom points and crossings using chaired bullhead rail would be referred to using a letter and number combination. The letter would define the length (and hence the radius) of the switch blades and the number would define the angle of the crossing (frog). Thus an A7 turnout would be very short and likely only to be found in tight places like dockyards whereas an E12 would be found as a fairly high speed turnout on a mainline.


title: Railroad switch

text: On the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, switch curvatures were specified from A (sharpest) to F (shallowest), with the following corresponding radii:


title: Railroad switch

text: To minimize accidents caused by these risks, suitable technical remedies as well as certain practices are applied. The most important are:


title: Railroad switch

text: The "points" ("switch rails" or "point blades") are the movable rails which guide the wheels towards either the straight or the diverging track. They are tapered on most switches, but on "stub switches" they have square ends.


title: Railroad switch

text: In the UK and Commonwealth countries, the term "points" refers to the entire mechanism, whereas in North America the term refers only to the movable rails.


title: Railroad switch

text: In some cases, the switch blades can be heat treated for improvement of their service life. There are different kinds of heat treatment processes such as edge hardening or complete hardening.


title: Railroad switch

text: The cross-section of the switch blades also influences performance. New tangential blades perform better than old-style blades.


title: Railroad switch

text: The frog, also known as the common crossing (or V-rail in Australian terminology), is the crossing point of two rails. This can be assembled out of several appropriately cut and bent pieces of rail or can be a single casting of manganese steel. On lines with heavy use the casting may be treated with explosive shock hardening to increase service life.


title: Railroad switch

text: On lines with heavy or high-speed traffic, a swingnose crossing (movable-point frog) may be used. As the name implies, there is a second mechanism located at the frog. This moves a small portion of rail, to eliminate the gap in the rail that normally occurs at the frog. A separate switch machine is required to operate the movable-point frog switch.


title: Railroad switch

text: This term "frog" is taken from the part of a horse's hoof it most closely resembles. Certain types of overhead electrification systems that make use of trolley poles have similar devices referred to as wire frogs.


title: Railroad switch

text: On dual-gauge switches, a special frog is used where the third rail crosses the common rail. Denver and Rio Grande crews called this a "toad".


title: Railroad switch

text: A recent development on North American freight railroads is the flange-bearing frog, in which the wheel flange supports the weight of the vehicle as opposed to the tread. This design reduces impact loading and extends the life of the frog.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "guard rail" ("check rail") is a short piece of rail placed alongside the main (stock) rail opposite the frog. These ensure that the wheels follow the appropriate flangeway through the frog and that the train does not derail. Generally, there are two of these for each frog, one by each outer rail. Guard rails are not required with a "self-guarding cast manganese" frog, as the raised parts of the casting serve the same purpose.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "switch motor" (also known as a switch machine, point motor, point machine, or automater) is an electric, hydraulic or pneumatic mechanism that aligns the points with one of the possible routes. The motor is usually controlled remotely by the dispatcher (signaller in the UK). The switch motor also includes electrical contacts to detect that the switch has completely set and locked. If the switch fails to do this, the governing signal is kept at red (stop). There is also usually some kind of manual handle for operating the switch in emergencies, such as power failures, or for maintenance purposes.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "points lever", "ground throw", or "switchstand" is a lever and accompanying linkages that are used to align the points of a switch manually. This lever and its accompanying hardware is usually mounted to a pair of long sleepers that extend from the switch at the points. They are often used in a place of a switch motor on infrequently used switches. In some places, the lever may be some distance from the points, as part of a lever frame or ground frame. To prevent the tampering of switches by outside means, these switches are locked up when not in use.


title: Railroad switch

text: A point machine conversion system consist in a remotely controlled device attached to an existing manually operated point that allows the shunter or driver to remotely operate hand points with a radio handset. Each converter can be used as a stand-alone or multiple units can be installed operating together with routing.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "facing point lock" ("FPL"), or "point lock", is a device which, as the name implies, locks a set of points in position, as well as mechanically proving that they are in the correct position. The "facing point" part of the name refers to the fact that they prevent movement of the points during facing moves, where a train could potentially "split" the points (end up going down both tracks) if the points were to move underneath the train. During trailing moves, the wheels of a train will force the points into the correct position if they attempt to move, although this may cause considerable damage. This act is known as a "run through".


title: Railroad switch

text: In the United Kingdom, FPLs were common from an early date, due to laws being passed which forced the provision of FPLs for any routes traveled by passenger trains – it was, and still is, illegal for a passenger train to make a facing move over points without them being locked, either by a point lock, or temporarily clamped in one position or another.


title: Railroad switch

text: "Joints" are used where the moving points meet the fixed rails of the switch. They allow the points to hinge easily between their positions. Originally the movable switch blades were connected to the fixed closure rails with loose joints, but since steel is somewhat flexible it is possible to obviate this looseness by thinning a short section of the rail's bottom itself. This can be called a heelless switch.


title: Railroad switch

text: Turnouts were originally built with straight switch blades, which ended at the pointed end with a sharp angle. These switches cause a bump when the train traverses in the turnout direction. The switch blades could be made with a curved point which meets the stockrail at a tangent, causing less of a bump, but the disadvantage is that the metal at the point is thin and necessarily weak. A solution to these conflicting requirements was found in the 1920s on the German Reichsbahn. The first step was to have different rail profile for the stock rails and switch rails, with the switch rails being about less high, and stockier in the middle.


title: Railroad switch

text: As it is difficult to see the lie of a switch from a distance, especially at night, European railways and their subsidiaries provide point indicators which are often illuminated.


title: Railroad switch

text: Apart from the standard right-hand and left-hand switches, switches commonly come in various combinations of configurations.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "double slip switch" ("double slip") is a narrow-angled diagonal flat crossing of two lines combined with four pairs of points in such a way as to allow vehicles to change from one straight track to the other, alternatively to going straight across. A train approaching the arrangement may leave by either of the two tracks on the opposite side of the crossing. To reach the third possible exit, the train must change tracks on the slip and then reverse.


title: Railroad switch

text: The arrangement gives the possibility of setting four routes, but because only one route can be traversed at a time, the four blades at each end of the crossing are often connected to move in unison, so the crossing can be worked by just two levers or point motors. This gives the same functionality of two points placed end to end. These compact (albeit complex) switches usually are found only in locations where space is limited, such as station throats (i.e. approaches) where a few main lines spread out to reach any of numerous platform tracks.


title: Railroad switch

text: In North American English, the arrangement may also be called a "double switch", or more colloquially, a "puzzle switch". The Great Western Railway in the United Kingdom used the term "double compound points", and the switch is also known as a "double compound" in Victoria (Australia). In Italian, the term for a double switch is , which means "English switch". Likewise, it is called in Dutch, and was called in German in former times.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "single slip switch" works on the same principle as a double slip, but provides for only one switching possibility. Trains approaching on one of the two crossing tracks can either continue over the crossing, or switch tracks to the other line. However, trains from the other track can only continue over the crossing, and cannot switch tracks. This is normally used to allow access to sidings and improve safety by avoiding having switch blades facing the usual direction of traffic. To reach the sidings from what would be a facing direction, trains must continue over the crossing, then reverse along the curved route (usually onto the other line of a double track) and can then move forward over the crossing into the siding.


title: Railroad switch

text: An "outside slip switch" is similar to the double or single slip switches described above, except that the switch blades are outside of the diamond instead of inside. An advantage over an inside slip switch is that trains can pass the slips with higher speeds. A disadvantage over an inside slip switch is that they are longer and need more space.


title: Railroad switch

text: An outside slip switch can be so long that its slips do not overlap at all, as in the example pictured. In such a case a single, outside slip switch is the same as two regular switches and a regular crossing. An outside, double slip switch is about the same as a "scissors crossover" (see below), but with the disadvantages:


title: Railroad switch

text: Due to the disadvantages over both the "double inside slip switch" and the "scissors crossover", double outside slip switches are only used in rare, specific cases.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "crossover" is a pair of switches that connects two parallel rail tracks, allowing a train on one track to cross over to the other. Like the switches themselves, crossovers can be described as either "facing" or "trailing".


title: Railroad switch

text: When two crossovers are present in opposite directions, one after the other, the four-switch configuration is called a "double crossover". If the crossovers in different directions overlap to form an ×, it is dubbed a "scissors crossover", "scissors crossing", or just "scissors"; or, due to the diamond in the center, a "diamond crossover". This makes for a very compact track layout at the expense of using a level junction.


title: Railroad switch

text: In a setup where each of the two tracks normally carries trains of only one direction, a crossover can be used either to detour "wrong-rail" around an obstruction or to reverse direction. A crossover can also join two tracks of the same direction, possibly a pair of local and express tracks, and allow trains to switch from one to the other.


title: Railroad switch

text: On a crowded system, routine use of crossovers (or switches in general) will reduce throughput, as use of the switch blocks multiple tracks. For this reason, on some high-capacity rapid transit systems, crossovers between local and express tracks are not used during normal rush hour service, and service patterns are planned around use of the usually flying junctions at each end of the local-express line.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "stub switch" lacks the tapered points (point blades) of a typical switch. Instead, both the movable rails and the ends of the rails of the diverging routes have their ends cut off square. The switch mechanism aligns the movable rails with the rails of one of the diverging routes. In 19th century US railroad use, the stub switch was typically used in conjunction with a harp switch stand.


title: Railroad switch

text: The rails leading up to a stub switch are not secured to the sleepers for several feet, and rail alignment across the gap is not positively enforced. Stub switches also require some flexibility in the rails (meaning lighter rails), or an extra joint at which they hinge. Therefore, these switches cannot be traversed at high speed or by heavy traffic and so are not suitable for main line use. A further disadvantage is that a stub switch being approached from the diverging route that is not connected by the points would result in a derailment. Yet another disadvantage is that in very hot weather, expansion of the steel in the rails can cause the movable rails to stick to the stock rails, making switching impossible until the rails have cooled and contracted.


title: Railroad switch

text: One advantage to stub switches is that they work better in the snow. The sideways action of the point rails pushes snow to the side, instead of packing the snow between the points and the rail in a more modern design.


title: Railroad switch

text: Stub switches were more common in the very early days of railways and their tramway predecessors. Now, because of their disadvantages, stub switches are used primarily on narrow gauge lines and branch lines. Some modern monorail switches use the same principle.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "three-way switch" is used to split a railroad track into three divergent paths rather than the more usual two. There are two types of three-way switches. In a "symmetrical three-way switch", the left and right branches diverge at the same place. In an "asymmetrical three-way switch", the branches diverge in a staggered way. Both types of three-way switches require three frogs.


title: Railroad switch

text: The complexity of symmetrical switches usually results in speed restrictions, therefore three-way switches are most often used in stations or depots where space is restricted and low speeds are normal. Symmetrical switches were used quite often on Swiss narrow-gauge railways. Asymmetrical three-way switches are more common, because they do not have speed restrictions compared to standard switches. However, because of their higher maintenance cost due to special parts as well as asymmetric wear, both types of three-way switches are replaced with two standard switches wherever possible.


title: Railroad switch

text: In areas with very low speeds, like depots, and on railroads that had to be built very cheaply, like logging railroads, three-way switches were sometimes built as stub switches.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "plate switch" incorporates the tapered points of a typical switch into a self-contained plate. Each point blade is moved separately by hand. Plate switches are only used for double-flanged wheels, with wheels running through the plates on their flanges, guided by the edges of the plate and the moveable blade.


title: Railroad switch

text: Because plate switches can only be used by double-flanged wheels and at extremely low speeds, they are typically only found on hand-worked narrow gauge lines.


title: Railroad switch

text: The off-railer is a system of installing a turnout over and above some plain track, without having to cut or replace that track. It is useful for installing temporary branches on agricultural railways, and sidings for track machines on mainline rails. Special ramps lift the wheels off the normal track, and then the off-railer curves away as required. Decauville has such a system. It is a bit like a drawbridge crossing.


title: Railroad switch

text: An "interlaced turnout" is a different method of splitting a track into three divergent paths. It is an arrangement of two standard turnouts, one left- and one right-handed, in an "interlaced" fashion. The points of the second turnout are positioned between the points and the frog of the first turnout. In common with other forms of three way turnouts an additional common-crossing is required. Due to the inherent complexity of the arrangement, interlaced turnouts are normally only used in locations where space is exceptionally tight, such as station throats or industrial areas within large cities. Interlaced turnouts can also be found in some yards, where a series of switches branching off to the same side are placed so close together that the points of one switch are placed before the frog of the preceding switch.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "wye switch" ("Y points") has trailing ends which diverge symmetrically and in opposite directions. The name originates from the similarity of their shape to that of the letter Y. Wye switches are usually used where space is at a premium. In North America this is also called an "equilateral switch" or "equilateral turnout". Common switches are more often associated with mainline speeds, whereas wye switches are generally low-speed yard switches.


title: Railroad switch

text: One advantage of wye switches is that they can have a coarser frog angle using the same radius of curvature than a common switch. This means that they give rise to a less severe speed restriction than the diverging branch of a common switch, without having to resort to more expensive switches with a moving frog. For this reason they are sometimes used on a main line where it splits into two equally important branches or at the ends of a single track section in an otherwise double track line.


title: Railroad switch

text: "Run-off points" are used to protect main lines from stray or runaway cars, or from trains passing signals set at danger. In these cases, vehicles would otherwise roll onto and foul (obstruct) the main line and cause a collision. Depending on the situation in which they are used, run-off points are referred to either as trap points or catch points. Derailers are another device used for the same purpose.


title: Railroad switch

text: "Catch points" are installed on the running line itself, where the railway climbs at a steep gradient. They are used to prevent runaway vehicles colliding with another train further down the slope. In some cases, catch points lead into a sand drag to safely stop the runaway vehicle, which may be travelling at speed. Catch points are usually held in the 'derail' position by a spring. They can be set to allow a train to pass safely in the downhill direction using a lever or other mechanism to override the spring for a short time.


title: Railroad switch

text: Catch points originate from the days of the 'unfitted' goods (freight) train. As these trains tended to consist of either completely unbraked wagons (relying entirely on the locomotive's own brakes), or ones with unlinked, manually applied brakes (necessitating a stop at the top of steep downgrades for the guard to walk along the train and set the brakes on each wagon in turn), they also lacked any mechanism to automatically brake runaway cars. Catch points were therefore required to stop the rear portion of a poorly coupled train that might break away whilst "climbing" a steep grade – although they would also stop vehicles that ran away for any other reason. Now that trains are all 'fitted' (and broken couplings are far less common), catch points are mostly obsolete.


title: Railroad switch

text: Similar to catch points, "trap points" are provided at the exit from a siding or where a goods line joins a line that may be used by passenger trains. Unless they have been specifically set to allow traffic to pass onto the main line, the trap points will direct any approaching vehicle away from the main line. This may simply result in the vehicle being derailed, but in some cases a sand drag is used, especially where the vehicle is likely to be a runaway travelling at speed due to a slope.


title: Railroad switch

text: A "derailer" works by derailing any vehicle passing over it. There are different types of derailers, but in some cases they consist of a single switch point installed in a track. The point can be pulled into a position to derail any equipment that is not supposed to pass through.


title: Railroad switch

text: "Dual gauge switches" are used in dual gauge systems. There are various possible scenarios involving the routes that trains on each gauge may take, including the two gauges separating or one gauge being able to choose between diverging paths and the other not. Because of the extra track involved, dual gauge switches have more points and frogs than their single gauge counterparts. This limits speeds even more than usual.


title: Railroad switch

text: A related formation is the 'swish' or rail exchange, where (usually) the common rail changes sides. These have no moving parts, the narrower gauge wheels being guided by guard rails as they transition from one rail to another. The wider gauge only encounters continuous rail so is unaffected by the exchange. At dual gauge turntables, a similar arrangement is used to move the narrow gauge track from one side to a central position.


title: Railroad switch

text: Rack railway switches are as varied as rack railway technologies. Where use of the rack is optional, as on the Zentralbahn in Switzerland or the West Coast Wilderness Railway in Tasmania, it is common to place turnouts only in relatively flat areas where the rack is not needed. On systems where only the pinion is driven and the conventional rail wheels are idlers, such as the Dolderbahn in Zürich, Štrbské Pleso in Slovakia and the Schynige Platte rack railway, the rack must be continuous through the switch. The Dolderbahn switch works by bending all three rails, an operation that is performed every trip as the two trains pass in the middle. The Štrbské Pleso and Schynige Platte Strub rack system instead relies on a complex set of moving points which assemble the rack in the traversed direction and simultaneously clear the crossed direction conventional rails. In some rack systems, such as the Morgan system, where locomotives always have multiple driving pinions, it is possible to simplify turnouts by interrupting the rack rail, so long as the interruption is shorter than the spacing between the drive pinions on the locomotives.


title: Railroad switch

text: Some systems use transfer tables instead to provide continuous rack. The Pilatus Railway has unusual switches that rotate on an axis parallel to the track.


title: Railroad switch

text: Although not strictly speaking a turnout, a "switch diamond" is an active trackwork assembly used where the crossing angle between two tracks is too shallow for totally passive trackwork: the unguided sections of each rail would overlap. These vaguely resemble two standard points assembled very closely toe-to-toe. These would also often utilise swingnose crossings at the outer ends to ensure complete wheel support in the same way as provided on shallow angle turnouts. In North America these are known as "Movable-Point Diamonds". In the UK, where the angle of divergence is shallower than 1 in 8 (center-line measure) a switched diamond will be found rather than a passive or fixed diamond.


title: Railroad switch

text: Such switches are usually implemented on the basis of increasing the safe crossing speed. Open blades impose a speed restriction, due to the potential of the crossing impact fracturing the rail as both wheels on each axle hit the crossing gaps almost simultaneously. Switched blades, as shown in the photograph, allow a much higher speed across the gap by providing an essentially continuous piece of rail across the gap on both sides.


title: Railroad switch

text: The frog end of the switched crossing, despite still having a gap in one rail, is less problematic in this regard. The outer rail is still continuous, the wing rail (the part that turns out, after the frog gap) provides a gradual transition, and the check rail avoids the possibility of points splitting. This can be seen in how, under examination, the wing rail has a wider polished section, showing how the wheel load is transferred across the gap.


title: Railroad switch

text: Single point switches, known as Tongue and Plain Mate switches, are sometimes used on freight railways in slow speed operation in paved areas such as in ports. In the United States, they are regulated by provision 213.135(i) of the Federal Railroad Administration Track Safety Standards.


title: Railroad switch

text: On streetcar (tram) systems using grooved rails, if the wheels on both sides of the car are connected by a rigid solid axle, only one switchpoint is needed to steer it onto one or the other track. The switchpoint will be on inside rail of the switch's curve route. When a streetcar enters the curve route of the switch, the wheel on the inside of the curve (the right side of the car on a right turn) is pulled into the turn, and through the axle, directs the wheel on the outside to also follow the curve. The outside wheel is supported for a short distance by its flange running in the groove.


title: Railroad switch

text: Some low floor streetcar designs use split axles (a separate half-axle for the wheel on each side of the car). Such streetcars are unsuitable for use with single-point switches as there would be no mechanism to transfer the force from the inner to outer wheels at switches.


title: Railroad switch

text: A single-point switch is cheaper to build, especially in street trackage, as there is no need to link to a second switchpoint.


title: Railroad switch

text: Rotary switches are sometimes used on cog railways to maintain alignment of the cog with two different tracks. They are used on the Pilatus Cog Railway to allow up-bound and down-bound trains to pass each other on a grade while sharing the remainder of the single track.


title: Railroad switch

text: A rotary switch rotates about its long axis to present a track connection to a chosen set of tracks. Physically, it flips over (rotates about its long axis 180 degrees) to connect to the chosen set of tracks. Once the rotary switch is secured the train can proceed. Cog alignment is maintained in both positions.


title: Railroad switch

text: When a tram track is interrupted during repairs, a set of temporary points may be placed on top of existing track to allow trams to cross to the parallel track. These are known as ' or "Auflegeweichen" in German, "aiguillages californiens" in French, and ', "klimwissels" or "Californische wissels" in Dutch. They may be welded into place and allow trams to pass at walking pace.


title: Railroad switch

text: Expansion joints look like a part of a railroad switch, but have a completely different purpose, namely to compensate for the shrinkage or expansion of the road bed - e.g. typically, a larger steel bridge - due to changes in temperature, to avoid sun kink.


title: Railroad switch

text: In North America, turnouts are rated numerically, which represents the ratio of divergence per length as measured at the frog. A rule of thumb is that the rated speed of a switch (in miles per hour) is twice the numerical rating:


title: Railroad switch

text: In most other countries, switches are marked with tangent of crossing angle. For example, Russia and the rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) use the following designations:


title: Railroad switch

text: In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Poland and other European countries, switches are described by the radius of the branching track (in meters) and the tangent of the frog angle. The crossing may be straight, as in a crossover, or curved for other uses. The following designations are typical examples:


title: Railroad switch

text: Other considerations include the type of turnout (e.g. normal nose, swing nose, slips), wear and tear issues, and the weight and type of the vehicle passing over. Speeds for a trailing movement may be higher than for a facing movement. In many systems, speed limits vary depending on the type of train; for example, a turnout can have a "normal" speed limit for locomotive hauled trains, and a higher speed for multiple unit or high speed trains.


title: Railroad switch

text: Turnouts with curved or tangential switch blades have higher speed than old style turnouts with straight switch blades.


title: Railroad switch

text: Older turnouts use the same rail section, shaved down, for both stock rail and switch blade. Newer tangential turnouts use a stubbier rail section for the switch blade.


title: Railroad switch

text: Turnouts are large pieces of rail infrastructure which may be too big, wide, or heavy to transport in one piece. Special wagons can carry the pieces at approximately 45° from vertical, so that they fit within the structure gauge. Once all the pieces have arrived, the turnout is assembled sleeper by sleeper on site. A set of turnouts may be trial assembled beforehand off site, to check that everything fits.


title: Craig Biggio

text: Craig Alan Biggio (; born December 14, 1965) is an American former second baseman, outfielder and catcher in Major League Baseball who played his entire career from 1988 through 2007 for the Houston Astros. A seven-time National League (NL) All-Star often regarded as the greatest all-around player in Astros history, he is the only player ever to be named an All-Star and to be awarded Silver Slugger Award at both catcher and second base. With longtime teammates Jeff Bagwell and Lance Berkman, he formed the core of the "Killer B's" who led Houston to six playoff appearances from 1997 to 2005, culminating in the franchise's first World Series appearance in 2005. At the end of his career, he ranked sixth in NL history in games played (2,850), fifth in at bats (10,876), 21st in hits (3,060), and seventh in runs scored (1,844). His 668 career doubles ranked sixth in major league history, and are the second-most ever by a right-handed hitter; his 56 doubles in 1999 were the most in the major leagues in 63 years.


title: Craig Biggio

text: Biggio, who batted .300 four times and scored 100 runs eight times, holds Astros franchise records for most career games, at bats, hits, runs scored, doubles, total bases (4,711) and extra base hits (1,014), and ranks second in runs batted in (1,175), walks (1,160) and stolen bases (414). He also holds the NL record for most times leading off a game with a home run (53), and is one of only five players with 250 home runs and 400 steals. A four-time Gold Glove Award winner who led NL second basemen in assists six times and putouts five times, he retired ranking fourth in NL history in games at second base (1,989), sixth in assists (5,448) and fielding percentage (.984), seventh in putouts (3,992) and double plays (1,153), and eighth in total chances (9,596). He was the ninth player in the 3,000 hit club to collect all his hits with one team. Biggio also led the NL in times hit by pitch five times, with his career total of 285 trailing only Hughie Jennings' 287 in major league history.


title: Craig Biggio

text: One of the most admired players of his generation, Biggio received the 2005 Hutch Award for perseverance through adversity and the 2007 Roberto Clemente Award for sportsmanship and community service. The Astros retired the number 7 in his honor the year following his retirement. Since 2008, Biggio has served as special assistant to the general manager of the Astros. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015, and is the first member of the Hall to be depicted in an Astros uniform on his plaque.


title: Craig Biggio

text: Craig Biggio graduated from Kings Park High School in Kings Park, New York, where he excelled as a multi-sport varsity athlete. Most notably, after the 1983 season Biggio was awarded the Hansen Award, which recognized him as being the best football player in Suffolk County. However, Biggio's passion lay with baseball, such that he turned down football scholarships for the opportunity to play baseball for Seton Hall University.


title: Craig Biggio

text: Although Biggio was an infielder, Seton Hall coach Mike Sheppard switched him to catcher because the team was in need of one. In 1986, he played collegiate summer baseball in the Cape Cod Baseball League for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox.


title: Craig Biggio

text: Biggio was an All-American baseball player at Seton Hall, where he played with other future Major League Baseball stars Mo Vaughn and John Valentin. Biggio, Vaughn and Valentin, along with Marteese Robinson, were featured in the book "The Hit Men and the Kid Who Batted Ninth" by David Siroty, which chronicled their rise from college teammates to the major leagues.


title: Craig Biggio

text: Biggio was selected by the Houston Astros in the first round (22nd overall) of the 1987 draft. Biggio remains Seton Hall's leader in triples, second in runs scored, and is in the top 10 in 18 other single-season and career categories. In 1996, Biggio was inducted into the Seton Hall Hall of Fame and had his number 44 retired in 2012.


title: Craig Biggio

text: Biggio was called up as a catcher midway through the 1988 season, having batted .344 in his minor league career. In 1989, his first full season, Biggio became the Astros' starting catcher. He won the Silver Slugger Award in 1989. He was a very speedy runner, and an adept base stealer. Astros management, in an attempt to keep the rigors of catching from sapping Biggio's speed, tried him in the outfield part-time in 1990, as he had played 18 games there in the minors. Yogi Berra mentioned Biggio's height in his book "You Can Observe A Lot By Watching", saying, "I always identified with short catchers—they don't have to stand up as far".