Read This

Matt Manson stared at the burned-out corpse of his pick-up truck on Friday, which sat on a blackened driveway in front of a smoldering pile of rubble that once was his house. Like other residents of the small agricultural town of Phoenix, Oregon, he was in shock as he returned to his neighborhood and saw how fast the Alameda Drive wildfire had engulfed his home and upended his life.

For Pavel Chilin, building his own railway was the fulfillment of a childhood dream. It took the 62-year-old electrical engineer more than 10 years to build a 350-meter (383-yard)-long narrow-gauge railway twisting through the grounds of his steads about 50 kilometers (some 30 miles) outside St. Petersburg. The design of his steam train is based on a classic example from the early 20th century.

Tesla Inc's rapid rise to become the world's most valuable carmaker could mark the start of a new era for the global auto industry, defined by a Silicon Valley approach to software that is overtaking old-school manufacturing know-how. Tesla's ascent took many investors by surprise. Daimler, which bears the name of the man who invented the modern car 134 years ago, bought a nearly 10% Tesla stake in May 2009 in a deal which provided a $50 million lifeline for the struggling start-up.