Old Flickr Rail Photos

I took this one in Hradec Kralove, a city in the far east of Bohemia, just on the border with Moravia. These are all Class 130 electrics from the 1970s, built by Skoda, and they're not particularly fast or impressive, although it should be noted that they still are important in Kralovsky Kraj, the region in question, working locals and freights, out of line with the norm of EMUs handling local services. Notice the water spout between the units on the right!!!! Ceskoslovenske Drahy (the old pre-1993 operator) didn't get rid of steam until 1982, and many of their steamers are still in mainline excursion service, so a lot of the steam infrastructure is still in place, up to and including roundhouses and steam shops!!!

This one was taken in Amsterdam Centraal in 1998 (in spite of the copyright date), and because of its relative abstraction I've posted it here. I shot it with either Kodak Tri-X or Ilford Delta 400 (I don't remember which), and then I cranked up the contrast after scanning it. In the original prints, I eventually did the same with filters, but the print I scanned was kind of soupy.

This is a classic "Prague" shot, maybe not so much from the tourist brochures, but from Czech TV and movies. It's very popular, it seems, to shoot a scene with a Tatra T3 tram coming over the hill at Palackeho Namesti, although here the T3 is meeting a KT8 on the northbound track.

I wasn't expecting to take this. I was walking in a field on my first visit to England in 1993, being fully aware that I was next to a mainline (in this case the Great Eastern, if I'm not mistaken), and more worried about being electrocuted, as the trees hadn't been cut back very well. Nevertheless, I had my Kodak Star 735 in my hands, and then I heard an indescribable roar doppling towards me. The trees were blocking my view, but I raised the camera, caught this BR freight coming down the line at what must have been at least 80 m.p.h., and possibly faster, and swung around as it came by, getting this pan shot. It was all over in about 2 seconds, and I got the shot more or less by pure luck combined with reaction time, but I still think that it's one of my best train shots of all time. The blur of extreme speed (at least to my American mind of the time), combined with the memory of the noise, keep this shot in my head today whenever I'm attempting another one like it, which I should note I've never again succeeded in taking, even with a good SLR.

I took this on a Eurocity train between Bad Schandau and Dresden, where the speed limit is 160Km/h (100 m.p.h.), not fast by world standards, but fast enough to make things blur. To make things better, there was a beautiful orange-red sunrise directly to our east, so I managed to snap this and get it to blur to abstraction.

This is one of my favorite rail photographs of all time. I love the way the light outlines the boiler, as well as the crisp detail of the illuminated areas, and the contrast is also near-perfect, even if the ground detail is somewhat limited. On many of my prints of this shot, I've burned the ground in, of course, and it looks like I did the same with this one.

In the U.S., few other buildings than rail stations (except for some post offices, government buildings, and churches) were built to quite the same spectacular standards. This amazing fog-enshrouded tower is Cleveland Union Terminal, or Tower City as it's now known, originally built in 1930 for the New York Central Railroad. Wow... When I first saw it, I was astonished to know that it still existed, as I had only seen it in old photos, and American cities and landlords have an unpleasant habit of destroying their most beautiful buildings in favor of strip malls and parking lots. Not this one, though. C.U.T. is so huge, at 216 meters (708 feet) in height (not to mention its unusually large footprint for even such a tall building), that when it was built it was the second tallest building in the world, and the tallest building outside of New York City until 1967. This is my most "clever" shot of C.U.T., taken from the concourse, through the glass roof, which illustrates the sheer scale of the place. A number of major world rail stations have glass ceilings, glass trainsheds, and the like, although I'm not going to try and guess how high this one is. What's most impressive is that, high as it is, you can see the main office tower soaring above and behind it.

I took this one going over 100 m.p.h. on the Flying Scotsman, not the locomotive, but the scheduled train. There is a difference. :-) The shame of it is that my scanner put lines through the photo, but luckily I still have the original stashed somewhere. I think, though, that the "dustmarks" on the right are actually sheep. :-)

This is one of the most spectacular art deco railway stations in the Czech Republic, even if it's not in mint condition (it is, actually, in fairly decent condition). This stained glass window (whether real or painted), depicting the old CSD logo, is my favorite part.