Here's a story from my very-soon-wife-to-be's workplace. Some workmen moved a vending machine, but omitted to bolt it to the floor in its new location. The vending machine servicing man came to service the machine, opened the door and the machine fell on top of him. He lived to tell the tale. He was amply proportioned and it's quite possible that his fat layers helped protect his internal organs from terminal damage.

So, one good reason not to get lean. Here are some others:
1. At times of famine fat people have more chance of surviving, drawing on all those stored reserves.
2. Body fat is a good insulator, so keeps you warm in winter.
3. Body fat is less dense than other tissue and so it helps keep you bouyant in water.

Now, given the undeniable progress of global warming it's possible that we could be faced with food shortages, disruption of energy supplies and flooding. If that's the case then keeping a goodly layer of fat might be a wise move. Personally, I'm taking the view that well-stocked supermarkets and functioning central heating will continue to be a feature of my life for many years yet. And I live on a hill, so I'm not expecting to find water lapping around my feet any time soon.

Mind you, if a vending machine ever falls on me them I'm probably knackered.

Boston, Massachusetts? No, this post is about Boston, Lincolnshire. Yesterday's Sunday Times ran an article reporting that this town has the highest obesity rates in England, 31% against a national average of 21%. The 'mass' in my title refers to the combined weight of its inhabitants.

According to the paper, the cause is that an influx of migrant workers are now doing the heavy agricultural work which was the mainstay of employment in the area. The local population are now employed in more sedentary jobs, but are still eating as much as in the days when their work was more physically demanding. It seems a local delicacy is "chine", a shoulder cut of pork, partly boned, filled with parsely, sold cooked and eaten cold. Good grief, that must be using the word 'delicacy' in some manner that I'm not familiar with.

So, in the tones of the old Harry Enfield character I say:
"OI!, ... BOSTON!, ... NO!!!!"

Really, Boston, this is nothing to be proud of. However, help is at hand. By my reckoning if just 1200 of its populace could get themselves down from obese to just overweight then that would be enough to get this town off the top spot. It could then resume being famous for the Boston Stump, the biggest parish church in England rather than being infamous for having the fattest bods in England. So, come on residents of Boston, sign up for Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle today.

I note that this is reported as the most obese population in England, not the UK. I'd guess that there's somewhere in Scotland, home of the deep-fried confectionary, that's even worse than this. When I find out who you are then I'm going to be on your case too!

Last night was Halloween. Apparently this has its roots in the old Celtic festival of Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth, causing trouble and damaging crops. These days the worst that can befall you is having a few eggs thrown at your door, so I suppose that's progress.

We bought a large tin of Celebrations and left it by the front door with a view to placating any potential egg-chuckers or ghosts of the dead. This seemed to work as there were no eggs or ghostly manifestations to deal with over the course of the evening.

The night was also notable for the macabre spectacle that was the Barcelona -v- Chelsea game. Here we had some of the most talented footballers on the planet engaged in cheating, diving, kicking each other and haranguing the ref. Just occasionally when they forgot what they were there for they kicked the football around a bit. I thought Chelsea just edged the cheating whilst Barca edged the football so all-in-all a draw was was probably a fair result. ITV got into the spirit of the night by engaging a member of the living dead as their summariser in the form of David Pleat.

Anyway, at half time I spied the tin of Celebrations and thought to myself "Hmm, they look nice". Then I thought to myself "No, I'd better not or I'll end up eating half the tin". Then finally thought to myself "Let me see if I can just eat one and stop there". And that's what I did. The nutritional approach of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle doesn't seem to leave me with cravings for sweet things late in the evening such as I used to get. So, a good evening for me, my programme and my front door. Just a shame about the football.

What very fine weather we had at the weekend. The Daily Mail on Saturday got into the spirit of it by devoting pages 2 and 3 to a feature on how beautiful the countryside is looking at the moment, with all the trees turning. They even managed to restrain themselves from saying how it was all under threat from immigrant workers, asbo-badge-of-honour-wearers, radical muslim clerics, paedophiles and Tony Blair.

We took ourselves off for a walk up to Chanctonbury Ring. This local landmark used to be well known for the fine circle of trees that adorned its crown. The hurricane of '87 put paid to most of those, but it is slowly regenerating up there. We carried on past and found another route back, marred only by the misfortune of encountering some trail bike riders at the only point of the entire walk where it was muddy!

Anyway, it was glorious and I have to say that I felt fitter than I have done in years. If I'm this much improved after seven weeks of this program what am I going to be like after seventy weeks? Do they run Triathlons for the 50+ age group?

So, the big day is nearly here. By the time that I next post I will be a married man.

We're just having a small family affair. We've hired a limo to take us to the registry office. After the ceremony it's a short hop to our favourite Italian restaurant where we're taking over the basement floor. We've hired a musician and a magician for entertainment during the meal. Then it's all back to our place for champagne, speeches, more food and fireworks.

We're all set to go and we're looking forward to it with eager anticipation. The champagne is all lined up in the fridge, so it looks like Eddy's in Absolutely Fabulous.

I'm still planning to do my rowing in the morning, but all bets are off as regards good nutrition over the course of the day. I'll be back to the good habits on Sunday, though.

Our wedding day went off perfectly. Everything went to plan, everyone had a great time and it was a really happy day.

At about 10pm everyone had gone home so we decided to take ourselves off clubbing. A quick search on the net turned up the Casablanca club in Brighton with latino funk listed amongst its music styles. That sounded good so we headed off down there, still dressed in our finery.

It was great. They had a live band by the name of Mandinga who were excellent. We got a few funny looks on account of our age and dressed-up state but we didn't mind that and we happily bopped the night away.

We enjoyed it so much that we may go there again at some point. But next time I think we'll dress to blend in a little more. Or maybe we'll get some t-shirts made up with the title of this piece.

If you click through to the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle site then almost the first thing that confronts you is a picture of Tom Venuto himself in a bodybuilding pose. Now, the reaction of some men on seeing this might be "I'm not really sure if I want to look like that". And the reaction of most women would be "I'm really sure I don't want to look like that". (Or possible, "Phwoooaarghh", but that's another matter altogether.

Well the good news is that you don't have to look like that. But when it comes to losing fat there is much to learn from the bodybuilding fraternity. For the average man a body fat percentage in the 10% to 14% range would be considered good and lean. The male bodybuilders manage to drive this down to somewhere in the region of 4%, just about on the limit to what is possible. These guys are past masters in the techniques of losing fat and these can be applied to anyone who wants to shed some excess poundage.

By following the program you can go as low as you feel comfortable with. Once you've reached the target shape and size that you'd like to be then you can ease off so that you just maintain that desired state.

This ad is my pet hate at the moment. You've got this supposed teenager who actually looks about 29 trying to show his middle-aged Dad all this technology stuff and then thrilling him with a Gillette Fusion razor for Christmas. Now most middle-aged men that I know are gadget freaks would rather chew their own arm off than admit that the younger generation had anything to teach them about technology. Mind you, judging by the expression on this particular Dad's face it looks as though he might have had his intelligence blunted by a frontal lobotomy earlier in life, so maybe that explains it.

As for the product itself, I'd have thought that it's obvious that the more blades you add to a razor the more cumbersome it gets and the harder to get a good shave in all those nooks and crannies. What do they do to get around this? Add a sixth blade, of course! A triumph of marketing over common sense.

Personally I find I get a quite adequate shave with a two-blade razor. At least I do when I've taken a Stanley knife to that ridiculous lubricating strip that swells up and stops the blades getting into contact with your face.

Rant over!

I don't know how many weight loss blogs there are in operation, but it looks like an interesting one is about to be added. This page on the BBC web site tells how two Vice-ministers in the Japanese government have pledged to shed at least 5kg and their results are going to be published in a blog on the ministry website over the next six months. One of these ministers has the Health portfolio, so you can see how he ought to be setting a good example.

He says that he will walk for 10 minutes every day and stop using elevators. Hmm, it might take a bit more than that, I'm afraid. Is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle available in Japanese? Perhaps it ought to be.

But, anyway, good luck to them. Can we expect our government to follow suit, perhaps with John Prescott taking the lead? Somehow I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Totally off-topic today, but as a life-long West Ham supporter I can't let the occasion pass without commenting on Pardew's sacking. I think it was inevitable after the last three defeats. The team appeared to be clueless and he seemed to have run out of ideas on how to shake things up. The new owners were never going to entrust the January transfer budget to him in those circumstances.

Nevertheless, I'm sad to see him go and it's another demonstration of how any football manager's career hangs on a thread of good and bad fortune. In Pardew's case it would have been hard to predict during the summer that he would be hit by:
1. Dean Ashton's injury
2. The arrival of Tevez and Mascherano and their struggle to adapt to the Premiership style of play.
3. The unsettling effect of the takeover.
4. Most of all, the massive drop in form of key players such as Reo-Coker, Konchesky, Harewood, Zamora, Benayoun and Etherington.

All in all I think he did a great job over those three years. He slashed the wage bill whilst keeping a good squad of players together, got us promoted, kept us up when nobody gave us a prayer and took us to a memorable Cup Final. I wish him all the best and much better luck in his next job.

Christmas Day has been and gone. At the end of it my beloved surveyed the house and declared it to be a bit of a mess. At this point I conjured up a gin-assisted theory that this was in keeping with the true meaning of Christmas, as a celebration of one of the fundamental processes of the universe, namely the progression from a state of order to a state of disorder.

Scientists call this entropy. Through processes which are poorly understood, bits of the universe get organised into small pockets of organised matter in the shape of galaxies, stars, planets and lifeforms such as people, turkeys and brussel sprouts. Over time this organisation breaks down, so that eventually all that remains is dust and radiation. At Christmas we mimic this process by carefully organising nicely wrapped presents, beautifully prepared food and a well-stocked drinks cabinet. Then our friends and relatives descend on us and transform this into discarded wrapping paper, dirty plates, half-finished drinks, stains on the carpet and other waste products which I won't mention in a polite blog such as this.

Anyway I hope that you all had a nice Christmas and that your entropy levels were kept at manageable levels. Then, of course, there is the question of expanding waistlines, but I won't dwell on that just yet.

This TV programme has been fascinating viewing this week. Challenging though he found the assignment, I have to say that he picked an easy target. This was a Foundation Trust, in good financial state. My wife works for an NHS Trust that has a significant budget deficit and if he really wanted a challenge then he should of picked on of these. If he thought staff morale was low at Rotherham then that's nothing compared to the state of affairs brought on by the constant threat of redundancies and nit-picking, short-sighted cost reductions that save hundreds here whilst costing thousands elsewhere.

In any large organisation there are always problems in getting anything done. Different departments have different vested interests and these are rarely aligned with the overall goals of the organisation. However, in any normal hierarchical organisation you can always resolve conflicts by escalating up the management chain to a sufficiently high level. In practice you rarely have to do this, because no-one wants to be on the losing side of such an exercise and so compromises eventually get reached. However in the NHS where the reporting relationship of the clinicians to the trust management seems to be nominal then this sanction doesn't apply.

Notwithstanding the billions that are poured into it, the NHS overall does a good job. Nevertheless I think the wise thing is to keep out of their clutches as best you can. Eat well, exercise well, stay healthy.

The Sunday Times reports this week that increasing numbers of men are resorting to cosmetic surgery to reduce their man breasts. Apparently the number of operations nearly doubled in 2006 to around 4,000.

Now I don't suffer from this affliction, but I think I'd have to have some pretty major body image concerns before I would be willing to go under the knife for something like that. Any form of surgery has its risks.

The consultant plastic surgeon that they interviewed added "This technique is not appropriate for the obese. It should be reserved for very specific areas of fat in an otherwise fit person". So, there's your answer, the first port of call should be an attempt to lose these items through improved nutrition and exercise, just as offered in Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. Man boobs are just surplus fat, so you should be able to lose them in the same way as I am shedding my spare tyre. Plus you'll get all the other health benefits that come with the programme and avoid the costs of the surgery.

According to The Sunday Times, the latest focus group driven nonsense idea, presented at a cabinet meeting last week, is that doctors and nurses should smile more "to give the impression of caring". Doesn't that just sum it up? Never mind whether they actually do care or not, let's just give the impression!

Now if you visit your GP I think there's every chance that you'll find him or her grinning ear-to-ear, as a result of the obscene amounts of your tax revenue that they are pocketing at the moment. Likewise should you happen to meet anyone who is raking it in from the Private Finance Initiatives then I think there's a fair chance that they will also be doing a good impression of the Cheshire Cat.

Meanwhile in your local NHS trust hospital things are probably a little different. I know because my wife works in one that is continually struggling to balance the books. Currently they are looking to cut beds despite the fact that these are permanently in short supply. Everyone is in 'headless chicken' mode as they continually battle over inadequate resources. The trust is in a seat which the Conservatives could comfortably hold if they selected a stuffed weasel as a candidate, so funds to ease their problems aren't likely to be forthcoming.

Meanwhile the BBC web site tells us "A report drawn up last year by the Department of Health's chief economist found the most crowded hospitals - with bed occupancy rates over 90% - had MRSA rates 42% higher than average." Pretty obvious really, but financial pressures on the trust are driving them to push bed occupancy rates higher and higher.

So if you see a hospital doctor or nurse smiling then it's highly likely to be a wry smile at the stupidity of it all. The best thing you can do is to clean up your lifestyle to maximise your chances of staying out of their domain.

My wife was looking at my transformation pictures the other day and commented that I had also lost most of my 'love handles' fat. To be honest I had been so focused on my stomach that I hadn't even noticed these, but looking at the pictures I can certainly see what she meant.

As I've mentioned before on this blog it isn't possible to do spot reduction of your fat deposits using exercise or nutrition. If your body burns fat then it will burn it from everywhere. Mostly, as in my case, that is good news. If you've got visible fat then you've probably also got a lot of invisible fat clustering around your internal organs and for the sake of your general health it would be good to shed some of this too.

However for the ladies there is one downside, in so far as your boobs are predominantly fat and you can expect to lose a bit from these. Never mind, you're still going to look great and the guys are going to love your new toned-up figure.

If you really are determined to spot reduce them I'm afraid the only option is surgery. I'm planning to do a post on the risks of liposuction sometime soon.

Our boiler has packed up and needs replacing, so we have been without central heating for the past week while we get quotes and weigh up the options. We've got an immersion heater in our tank for hot water and we've been able to light a coal fire in our lounge in the evenings, so it hasn't been too bad. I suppose all the shivering is good for burning a few extra calories.

Last Saturday evening we decided to go out, so first we grabbed a meal at one of the Gourmet Burger outlets. It was ok, but we probably wouldn't hurry back there. We much prefer Nandos for a meal in that price range.

We then caught the show at our local comedy club. The highlight was definitely the comedian Roger Monkhouse. His act is basically "middle-age grumpy" but his delivery and his use of language are really quite unique. His solution for the problem of childhood obesity had me in stitches, as did much of his other material. Definitely go and see him if you get the chance, if you are fond of good stand-up.

The other advantage was that I missed the purgatory that was the Israel -v- England match. I was home in time to see the lowlights on Match of the Day and goodness me that was bad enough.

Today is Good Friday, so I am going to venture into a topic previously untouched on this blog, namely religion. As far as I know every society, from the primitive to the modern-day, has belief sets which answer the questions "What am I doing here?" and "What happens to me when I die?". Why is it that these appear to be universal amongst mankind?

Now these belief sets are all different and irreconcilable. If you are a Christian then the view of life after death held by Moslems will be anathema to you. If any one of these belief sets is right, then the majority of the others must be wrong. But yet they persist. This universality and persistance suggests to me that the tendency to hold these beliefs is adaptive, which is to say that individuals with the tendency to hold these beliefs have, at some point in our evolutionary past, had an advantage over those who didn't.

How could this be? My feeling is that the heightened sense of self-awareness and the ability to project the future enjoyed by homo sapiens is a double-edged sword. At one level it gives us a great survival advantage over other species. At another level it confronts us with the knowledge that today we are alive and tomorrow we might not be.

Now the existence that we enjoyed back in the hunter-gatherer era was a precarious one. In particular the hunters who survived and prospered had to have great skills in personal risk management. Take too many risks and you end up dead and you don't get to pass on your genes. Take too few risks and you don't bring home the meat, so you do badly in the mating stakes and you don't get to pass on your genes. In these circumstances a belief that this life isn't all there is probably helps avoid the latter of these two consequences.

So, I think the tendency towards religious belief has a genetic component. I've just Googled 'religious belief genetic' and top of the search results was this article in New Scientist which supports this point of view.

Anyway, if you subscribe to a religion then I'm sure that your religion encourages you to look after your body and lead a healthy life. If you don't, then this life is all you have on offer and it makes sense to make the most of it. Either way, get lean, get healthy is my advice.

My son is a second year university student and also a keen gamer. This weekend he is going to Amsterdam to meet up with fellow members of his World of Warcraft guild. That suprised me as I would have thought that keen gamers who were in need of some rest and recreation would have taken themselves off to the Amsterdam equivalent of Second Life, or some such. Even dedicated gamers need some face-to-face interaction, so it seems.

This makes me think that the science fiction vision of the future where we all stay home and live out our lives through sleek, muscular, attractive online avatars is still a long way off. For now, I'm afraid, it still matters what we look like in the flesh. Unfortunately if you are overweight then that is going to cloud other people's perception of you. As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his excellent book Blink, this all happens down at the subconscious level. Irrespective of how clear of prejudices a person manages to be in their conscious thoughts, their initial impression of you and their initial reactions to you will still be affected by that first visual image. This is pretty significant when it comes to things like job interviews.

Clearly in an ideal world it wouldn't be like this, but there is no escaping it. Until the day arrives when we all mostly live our lives through the virtual world, then meeting people will be just that little bit easier if make yourself as presentable as you can.

Here in the south of England we are enjoying a prolonged spell of fine, high pressure weather. This is quite unusual for April, as this time of year tends to be changeable and showery.

On Sunday we went on our favourite walk from Seaford Head up to Beachy Head. The route takes you across to Cuckmere Haven then up the river to the Golden Galleon at Exceat. This is a massively popular pub despite, in our opinion, having been spoiled when taken over and refurbished a few years ago. The last time we ate in there it took an hour for them to serve up some really poor quality food. So instead we went along the road and had a ploughmans at the Farmhouse Tea Rooms at the Seven Sisters Country Park, which was pleasant enough.

From there we picked our way back to the coast and up and down the Seven Sisters to Birling Gap and further refreshments at the pub there. From there it's the final uphill stretch to Beachy Head. As we neared the top we saw five people strangely attired standing near the cliff edge so we went to investigate. They turned out to be base jumpers, preparing to jump off the cliff with paraglider-style parachutes.

Now Beachy Head is 530 feet high. We weren't quite at the top, so let's say they were jumping 500 feet. That doesn't give you long to get your parachute launched, under control and able to pick a safe spot for landing amid the rocks at the bottom. How mad do you have to be to want to do this? Just this side of certifiable if you ask me.

Anyway, they all got down safely and we continued our walk to the top, then took the bus back to our starting point. A fine day out.

The gym I use has TV monitors tuned in to the music video channels. As it's a university gym they are mostly showing Q, Kerrang or Kiss. The other day due to some aberration they were tuned to Classic and were showing early 80's Genesis playing Turn It On Again.

The video was live performance footage interspersed with back-stage shots. Phil Collins was seen putting on his T-shirt in the dressing room, then later singing on stage without it. He looked in pretty good shape, in a wirey, rock-star sort of way.

Fast forward twenty five years and Genesis are touring again. I wonder if Phil is planning to appear on stage similarly attired. This photograph taken from their last tour suggests to me that he won't. It looks to me like there's probably a bit of a paunch there.

Time takes its toll on all of us. Many of us when we were young were able to eat what we liked, take next to no exercise and we still stayed in reasonable shape. But as middle-age sets in the body starts to pile on the fat reserves and we need to put more effort into keeping trim.

For Phil Collins this ought to be easy. He can afford a well-appointed gym in his country mansion, a personal trainer and a personal nutritionist. For the rest of us there's Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.

We've been to four really good concerts over the last two weeks.

First up was James Taylor. With just a keyboards player for backing he played all the old favourites and still sounds great. His introductions between the songs are also an important part of the act and he has an engaging and amusing personality. The drum machine which features on a couple of songs has to be seen to be believed.

Next were The Waterboys. Right now I'm probably as happy to go and see them as any band on the planet and they didn't disappoint. Their back line has changed since last summer, perhaps a bit less funky but still sold. They played a lot of new material from the new CD Book of Lightning. I hadn't heard this before the gig, but it sounds really strong.

Moving along, we had the Australian Pink Floyd. This was enjoyable, although something about the concert gave it the feel of a classical concert rather than rock concert. I think it's the fact of having top-notch musicians playing someone else's material, so perhaps a sense of ownership is lacking. I wonder if bands like this will still be playing this material long after the others have gone to join Syd for The Great Gig In The Sky?

The comparison with Tinariwen the following night couldn't be more marked. Their music combines the chants and the rhythms of Touareg desert tribesmen with crunchy electric guitars. So not only their own music, they have invented their own genre. There are as many rough edges as the Aussie Floyd were polished, but somehow the net effect was mesmerising. Each song starts up sounding a bit like the last one, but it picks you up in its arms and carries you away as it chugs along. Quite extraordinary.

I had to laugh when I saw this picture on the front of our local weekly free paper. Isn't that the most unconvincing dalek you could ever wish to see? And the expression on the little chap's face tells you that he is well aware of this fact. You can just imagine the conversation before they left home:

Nathan "Oh Muu-uu-um, it looks pants! My friends are all going to laugh at me".
Mum "Don't be silly Nathan, it looks really scary, just like the real thing. Now come on EX-TER-MIN-ATE"
Nathan (through gritted teeth) "ex-ter-min-ate"
Mum "Oh come on Nathan, you can do better than that!"

This sort of thing can scar you for life. He will probably suffer massive, inexplicable panic attacks in later life every time he sees a roll of Bacofoil. Parents, do not do this sort of thing to your kids!!

Someone contacted me recently with the following question: "I am thinking of buying this programme and just wondered how easy it is to follow, would you reccommend it. I currently exercise quite alot anyway so that isnt the problem, what is the diet like?"

My answer:

1. What is the diet like?
BFFM is not a diet, it is a lifestyle change. The ebook provides you with extensive information about nutrition and its effects on body fat. Armed with this information you can then decide what you eat, how much you eat and how often you eat, all tailored to your body mass, your fat reduction goals, your metabolic type and your activity levels. That's one of the things that make it sustainable compared, say, to eating cabbage soup for the rest of your life.

2. I currently exercise quite alot anyway so that isnt the problem.
That's good. You might possibly still get some value from the book, though, as some types of exercise will be more conducive to fat reduction than others.

3. ... just wondered how easy it is to follow ...
The book itself is well written and easy to read. But to read it thouroughly and to put it into practice is going to take more effort, time and thought than just adopting an off-the-shelf diet. Nothing worthwhile achieving is ever easy. Having said that, it's not that hard either. The goal setting chapter has some good suggestions that really help you to establish new habits.

Someone kindly bought us a weekend break at the Mariott Hotel, Zurich and we are just back from that trip. The highlights:

1. The breakfast buffet in the hotel. Every possible thing you could want for breakfast was there, so we stocked up our stomachs for the day. The BFFM edict on eating frequent small meals had to be put on hold.

2. The Zurich transport infrastructure. The network of trains, trams, buses, boats and cable cars is incredibly efficient, timely, clean and convenient and covers the city and the surrounding region. For 34 CHF you can buy a ZurichCard which gives you unlimited use of this network for 72 hours. It goes to show the level of public investment that is required to tempt people out of their cars. I really can't ever see this happening in the UK.

3. Movenpick ice cream. As I say, BFFM was on hold for a few days!

4. The trip to Uetliberg, Zurich's local small mountain. The S10 train takes you to the top, from which you have splendid views of the city and the lake. From there it's a one and three quarter hour walk along the top of the ridge to Felsenegg, where we stopped for a beer. In the garden a little Swiss folk band had set up to entertain a small party of people enjoying a birthday celebration. From Felsenegg the cable car takes you down to Adlisvil and the S4 back to the city.

5. On the final day we took a trip down to Lucerne and its local mountain, Pilatus. The cable car takes you all the way to the top, but unfortunately it was shrouded in cloud. Undaunted we took the 30 minute hike to the 7000 foot peak, Tomlishorn. On the way back down we stopped at Fräkmüntegg which at 4600 ft was below the cloud level and offered superb views of Lake Lucerne. One day we plan to return on a sunny day to enjoy the full panoramic vista at the top and also the alternative route to the top provided by the world's steepest cogwheel railway running up from Alpnachstad.