Trains

Terry Mullery and his wife, Lisa, of Burbank, love an occasional weekend in Las Vegas. It's the boring and often-arduous drive on Interstate 15 they hate. "We get up around 3 o'clock in the morning [on Friday] and are on the road by 4 … just to beat the traffic," he said. "And coming home [on Sunday], it's even worse unless you take an extra day off. No matter what, we get caught in horrific traffic. "You think, 'This is insane. Why don't they put tracks down and have trains on it?

U.S. hurdler Lolo Jones says she's been tempted. She says she's had plenty of opportunities. She's even had guys tell her that having sex with them will make her a faster runner. A win-win situation, right? But every time, Jones has said no. The 29-year-old Olympic athlete recently revealed on Twitter that she has never had sex. She discussed maintaining her virginity with Mary Carillo on the May 22 episode of HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel."

Some transit advocates attend meetings. Others write letters. Some even picket outside subway stations. Numan Parada makes maps. At a time when a subway-to-the-sea along Wilshire Boulevard is still far from a reality, he is plotting it on a map anyway. With the click of a mouse, he puts a notch next to the Getty Center on the rail line he envisions branching off Wilshire Boulevard to follow the 405 Freeway corridor to the San Fernando Valley. "That's a good place for a station," he said.

Forget Angry Birds. Your smartphone can be a powerful tool for improving your overall fitness if you give it half a chance. Whether you're a couch potato looking to start an exercise routine or a veteran runner looking to cross-train, there's an app for that. Our picks of some of the best downloads to get you moving, measure your progress and keep you motivated: Yoga With Janet Stone ($4.99 iPhone and iPad) There are a lot of yoga apps out there, but few are as sophisticated as this new release.

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

In the 19th-Century factory where George Pullman built the world's first sleeping car, the only domestic manufacturer of new rail cars is trying to reclaim U.S. dominance in the industry. Morrison Knudsen Corp., recognized for construction projects such as Hoover Dam and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, is following Chairman Bill Agee's vision of trains recovering the place in the transportation industry that they lost to planes and trucks. Some industry watchers share that vision.

When Laurie Greenquist volunteered to help out at the California State Railroad Museum here, she thought she'd probably just be showing visitors around, or maybe lending a hand with the paperwork. "Then they said I could work on the train," the 38-year-old government purchasing agent recalled with a grin. "It suddenly hit me: 'Wow! I can work on a real steam locomotive! I can learn to run that thing!'

Kudos on your missive, "Romancing the Rails." Hopefully, there will later be one on famous military troop and supply trains. VAL RODRIGUEZ Signal Hill

To most people, videotaping a passing 3 1/2 -mile freight train would be about as appealing as . . . well, waiting for a 3 1/2 -mile freight train to get out of the way. But to Joe Perry, an information network engineer for a downtown Los Angeles bank and a railroading enthusiast since childhood, the arrival of perhaps the biggest train ever in California last weekend was an opportunity not to be missed. "It's time to pack up again. We're heading out to the Salton Sea," the San Bernardino County resident recalls announcing to his wife Jan. 9, just after returning from a trip to photograph trains near Needles.

A massive truck stop in the middle of Missouri isn't where you'd expect to find a veteran triathlete, but this is where Joe Bechtold can be found most days. Bechtold, 44, is the general manager of Midway Truck Stop and Travel Plaza in Columbia and the star of the new show "Truck Stop Missouri" on the Travel Channel. When not overseeing the 12 businesses that make up Midway, Bechtold trains for triathlons, which he's been competing in since college. Bechtold took over the family business in 2000 after living in Australia for eight years, where he also trained and competed in tris.

Re "Rail requires high-speed spending," May 14 Your article on the feasibility of mounting a construction effort that could put $3.5 million of work in place each day was unduly negative. I worked on the Alameda Corridor and on the Utah I-15 programs, which showed the feasibility of delivering large civil works projects on an aggressive schedule. While they did not reach the peak volume planned for California's rail project, we have seen this volume in L.A. during the peak years of rail construction in the early 1990s.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Africa's rapid economic growth has helped change the stereotype of a hopeless continent of starving people waiting to be rescued, but it has also created an intense need for strong managers, according to a report released Tuesday. Poor management is hurting the effectiveness of global multinational corporations, major local companies, governments and charitable foundations in many African countries, says the report by the African Management Initiative, a nonprofit organization focused on training managers to help business development on the continent.

The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight. At a state Senate hearing, Chairman Dan Richard also said the agency plans to spend the entire $6 billion of initial construction money within a 2017 deadline set by the federal government.

Eight years ago, Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda explored childhood and family in the acclaimed drama "Nobody Knows," about a 12-year-old boy who must take care of his siblings when their mother runs off with a new boyfriend. Kore-eda returns to a similar theme but in a lighter, whimsical vein in "I Wish," which opened Friday. The leisurely paced comedy stars real-life brothers Koki and Ohshiro Maeda as siblings who live hundreds of miles apart from each other on the island of Kyushu after their parents break up. The elder brother, Koichi (13-year-old Koki)

With an Amtrak Pacific Surfliner crossing over the new Trestles bridge on Monday morning, local transportation officials marked the completion of a multimillion-dollar project to replace the storied, but worn-down, wooden structure that has served as the gateway to a San Diego County beach regarded as a birthplace of Southern California's surf culture. The original Trestles, built in 1941, was an 858-foot stretch of wooden post-and-beam bridge. Although it remained strong, with more than 40 passenger and freight trains crossing per day, the trains were required to slow down to reduce vibration and wear and tear.

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law. The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included -- the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

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Federal railroad officials Tuesday unveiled regulations for equipping the nation's freight and passenger trains with automated braking systems required by Congress after the deadly 2008 Metrolink crash in Chatsworth. "We believe this final rule, as mandated by Congress, is a giant step toward ensuring the safety and reliability of our freight, commuter and intercity passenger rail routes," said Joseph Szabo, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration. The rules will regulate the design and installation of positive train control technology that must be implemented on all freight and passenger railroads by December 2015.

EUROPE Presentation Susan Hickman, Distant Lands' rail agent, will help you plan your itinerary, from purchasing a ticket and boarding your train to exiting at your destination. When, where : 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info: Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. ROCK CLIMBING Workshop Rock-climbing instructors will teach assisted-rescue skills no climber should be without. When, where: 6 p.m. Tuesday at the REI store in Manhattan Beach, 1800 Rosecrans Ave., Suite E. Admission, info: $60; (310)

In response to growing concern about problems with its F-22 Raptor fighter jet, the Air Force revealed it has slapped on new safety restrictions to protect its pilots. The announcement came as Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) Friday requested additional information from the secretary of the Air Force to further determine the scope of safety concerns raised by several pilots of the world's most expensive fighter jet, designed and built byLockheed Martin Corp.