Rail Photos, Part 2

Following on the existing theme of towns with the same name in the Czech Republic, here's Usti nad Orlici, as opposed to the better-known Usti nad Labem. This station building looks quintessentially Central European to me, perhaps even Austrian, which makes some sense given that Bohemia and Moravia used to be part of the Austrian Empire.

One of the odd things about my Sony Ericsson Walkman W302 cameraphone is that when I take a shot of something passing by it quickly, not only does the subject blur, but it appears tilted diagonally, as here. I especially noticed this behaviour on the Brno trip, and I still haven't figured out exactly what causes it. This photo is of a ZSSK (Slovak Railways) Class 350 electric, which would have at one time been a CSD locomotive when the Czech Republic and Slovakia were united, along with their national railways. These locomotives were built by Skoda from 1974 until 1976, put out 4,000Kw (5,365 horsepower), and could operate (and still do) at speeds of up to 160Km/h (100 m.p.h.), meaning that they can be used on the fastest Eurocity and Intercity services in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

This was a less blurred and distorted shot of a Pendolino passing us, but I still didn't get the number because the coupler cover was open, and this is normally where the number is.

Like Brandys, Brezova is another town name. The Czech Wikipedia lists 13 towns and villages with this name, so the "nad....." is important whenever you say the town's name. This is the train station in Brezova nad Svitavou, right on the Bohemian-Moravian border. I'm assuming it's in Moravia for the sake of simplicity.

Here's a rather odd class of electric locomotive, the Class 230. Built by Skoda from 1966-1967 for Ceskoslovenske Drahy, these streamlined, very retro-looking locomotives are still in service on Ceske Drahy today, although some were exported to Bulgaria in the late 1960's and early 1970's. They're rated at 3,080Kw, or 4,130 horsepower, which would still have been very impressive at the time, and they have a maximum service speed of 110Km/h (68 m.p.h.), meaning that they're already obsolete for express passenger services. This one is marked, however, for the CD Cargo business unit, so it's probably well-utilised.

This trip is becoming a bit of a legend with my friends, even though it wasn't anything special. Basically, I chose not to stay over in Brno because I had to work the next day and I needed to get back to Prague reasonably quickly, so I figured I'd take the famous EuroNight sleeper train the "Metropol," which runs from Budapest to Berlin. This train isn't always on time, though, and in this case it was spectacularly late. In fact, it was probably the latest train I had ever had to wait for other than in the United States or Britain. The trainboard says that as of the time I took the photo it was 120 minutes late, but by the time it departed I think it was even later. Long before that, the Czechs on the platform were swearing in English. If you think about it, who wants to spend over two hours standing on a station platform in the middle of the night? What if it had been winter?

This train, which was also late, actually arrived before the Metropol, and it was also headed to Prague. I ran over to Platform 1 (I think that's the station side one in Brno), and boarded it with another person who wanted to experiment....

....then the Metropol pulled in, and we didn't pull out. In the end, we opted for the Metropol since we figured it would get priority. In the end, we were right.

By the time we got to Prague the next morning, long after the sun had come up, the trainboard said we were 130 minutes late (it's actually hard to read in this crappy cameraphone shot), but again we were later. This was several weeks ago, but as I said my friends are still talking about it now. One of them was also late on the same train this morning.

I took this at the zoo stop on the DPML (Liberec) tram system. The dual gauge is in order to facilitate operation to Jablonec, which has a 1-metre narrow-gauge tram system. Actually, as pre-1990's tram lines go, this route is relatively new, having not been completed until 1955. Since 1969, however, the line to Liberec has been the only surviving tram line in Jablonec, and is now operated by DPML. Even the line to Liberec saw sporadic use in the 1970's and 1980's, as reconstruction work was done, and planning argued over. The current operation dates to December 17th, 1989, exactly one month after the Velvet Revolution. The line is currently under reconstruction again, so I'm not aware of what the current service disruptions are. It is proposed as part of the new rebuilding to convert the Jablonec line to standard gauge, but I didn't see evidence of this for certain when I was in Jablonec or Liberec.

This was my first train photo in the U.S. in a long time. I took this in Fonda, NY, because I noticed that the gates at the Broadway crossing were activated and walked over to see if I could get something. I took video initially, and this is a still capture that my Panasonic can do. This was a work train, sitting in the siding, and the crossing gates kept going on a off, which I'm hoping CSX dealt with eventually. The locomotive is an EMD SD50-2, which is a rebuilt SD50 downgraded to 3,000 horsepower (from the stock 3,500). CSX primarily uses these on MOW (work) trains at the moment.

This was my first photo from the south end of the new Cercany platforms, of an express running nonstop through the station at about 80Km/h.

The Haje Metro was under reconstruction at one end when I took this, with the escalators being replaced. If you look carefully through the space above the boards here, you can see that the station originally had staircases, or maybe they were built under the escalators as backup.

This isn't my greatest ever rail photo, but I liked the blur on it.

This was a much better blur shot taken a few minutes later of an express coming through at about 80Km/h.

For most of my time in the Czech Republic, Ceske Drahy passenger cars have been painted blue and grey for local services, except for DMU's, which are red and cream or orange, yellow and green, while rychliks, intercities, Eurocities, have generally been green and grey. Some attempt has been made a standardisation in the past year, though, as many of the green and grey long-distance (rychlik/IC/EC) coaches have been painted blue and grey. A few of them have recently been repainted in this all-blue (albeit two-tone) scheme, so I figured I'd photograph one (albeit with my cameraphone :-)) and post it.

Some of the long-distance locomotives are also being painted blue and grey, from blue and yellow, green and yellow, or green and grey, and several other schemes. This one was actually coupled to a train in the older green and grey scheme.

Ages ago, I commented on the loss of the water spouts from Cercany with the new corridor reconstruction, but a few weeks ago, I spotted this water spout back in the service tracks. I don't know if this is one of the original ones, or if this one has been installed to replace the one from the platforms (it could be the old one, only moved), but there it is.