Sleeper

A sleeper is a person who is sleeping. It may also refer to:

General uses

Transportation

Vasco

The name Vasco, currently used as a Portuguese male name, derives from the medieval Iberian name Velasco, which probably has its origins in the Basque country (in Spanish: País Vasco).

Vasco may refer to:

People

Geography

Engineering

Vasco da Gama

Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira, (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈvaʃku ðɐ ˈɣɐmɐ]; c. 1460s – 23 December 1524) was a Portuguese explorer. He was the first European to reach India by sea, linking Europe and Asia for the first time by ocean route, as well as linking the Atlantic and the Indian oceans entirely and definitively, and in this way, the West and the Orient. This was accomplished on his first voyage to India (1497–1499).

Da Gama's discovery was significant and opened the way for an age of global imperialism and for the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia. The route meant that the Portuguese would not need to cross the highly disputed Mediterranean nor the dangerous Arabian Peninsula, and that the whole voyage would be made by sea. The sum of the distances covered in the outward and return voyages made this expedition the longest ocean voyage ever made until then, far longer than a full voyage around the world by way of the Equator.

One century after the discovery, European powers such as England, the Netherlands and France were finally able to challenge and break Portugal's monopoly and naval supremacy in the Cape Route around Africa, the Indian Ocean and in the Far East, opening a new era of European imperialism in the East.

Indian Railways

Indian Railways (reporting mark IR) is an Indian state-owned enterprise, owned and operated by the Government of India through the Ministry of Railways. It is one of the world's largest railway networks comprising 115,000 km (71,000 mi) of track over a route of 65,808 km (40,891 mi) and 7,112 stations. In 2014-15, IR carried 8.397 billion passengers annually or more than 23 million passengers a day (roughly half of whom were suburban passengers) and 1058.81 million tons of freight in the year. In 2014–2015 Indian Railways had revenues of ₹1634.50 billion (US$24 billion) which consists of ₹1069.27 billion (US$16 billion) from freight and ₹402.80 billion (US$5.9 billion) from passengers tickets.

Railways were first introduced to India in the year 1853 from Mumbai to Thane. In 1951 the systems were nationalised as one unit, the Indian Railways, becoming one of the largest networks in the world. IR operates both long distance and suburban rail systems on a multi-gauge network of broad, metre and narrow gauges. It also owns locomotive and coach production facilities at several places in India and are assigned codes identifying their gauge, kind of power and type of operation. Its operations cover twenty nine states and seven union territories and also provides limited international services to Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Narrow-gauge railway

A narrow-gauge railway (or narrow-gauge railroad) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than the 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in) of standard gauge railways. Most existing narrow gauge railways are between 600 mm (1 ft 11 ⁵⁄₈ in) and 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm).

Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with smaller radius curves, smaller structure gauges, lighter rails, etc., they can be substantially less costly to build, equip, and operate than standard gauge or broad gauge railways, particularly in mountainous or difficult terrain. The lower costs of narrow-gauge railways mean they are often built to serve industries and communities where the traffic potential would not justify the cost of building a standard or broad gauge line.

Narrow-gauge railways also have specialized use in mines and other environments where a very small structure gauge makes a very small loading gauge necessary. Narrow-gauge railways also have more general applications. Nonindustrial narrow-gauge mountain railways are or were common in the Rocky Mountains of the United States and the Pacific Cordillera of Canada, in Mexico, Switzerland, the former Yugoslavia, Greece, India, and Costa Rica. In some countries, narrow gauge is the standard, like the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge in Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, New Zealand, South Africa, and Tasmania, and the 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 ³⁄₈ in) metre gauge in Malaysia and Thailand.