Rail Photos, Part 2

When southbound one Linka 220, Ricany is the first station outside of Prague. As you can vaguely see in this shot, as of 2015 it was in decent condition, and my understanding is that it's been maintained well since. It's notable for the spiral ramp for passengers, especially those with bikes, just barely visible behind the platform canopy. The station building is on the other side of the tracks, behind me in this shot. The building dates to the 1880's, if I'm not mistaken, although services began stopping here in November of 1871, in line with most other stops on Linka 220.

Nadrazi Strancice is actually two stops south of Ricany, as Svetice is in between. For some reason, I didn't get a shot of Svetice on this trip. Strancice is mostly notable for being where some of the locals from Prague terminate, rather than continuing on to Benesov u Prahy. Whenever I've had to go further south, I've had to be mindful of this. There's also a freight-only branchline to Velke Popovice from Strancice, but this was cut short in around 2013, so it may have been left mostly in place as insurance for the future. I'm not aware of any current services on it, although it still had some working signals the last time I saw it.

As you can see, Nadrazi Mirosovice u Prahy was in very good condition as of 2015, and as far as I know it still is today. Mirosovice is two stops south of Strancice (with Mnichovice in the middle), and on this particular day, for whatever reason, I concluded my cameraphone shoot for the day. It may have been the battery, in hindsight, as I didn't want to be without a phone.

I didn't end up buying this railroad-themed board game, but the name is obviously a reference both to "Mogul" meaning a rich business person, in this case a railroad tycoon, as well as to the 2-6-0 Mogul steam locomotive type under the Whyte classification system.

I took this shot because, as far as I can remember, this was my first, or possibly second, visit to the Veleslavin Metro station. I had neglected to route bash this extension of Linka A when it had opened several months earlier, so this was my first meaningful chance to get some cameraphone shots of it. This extension actually extended Linka A from Dejvicka to Nemocnice Motol, with the Nadrazi Veleslavin and Petriny stations added in between. The original plan was to extend to the airport, but politics prevented this happening for the meantime. The project, as it was, took many years. The official date when the plan was finalized was April 15th, 2010, and the project was completed by the 6th of April, 2015. I seem to have memories of contruction dating back further, but this could be my imagination.

Built in 1850, this viaduct spans 1.1 kilometers from Bubny to Masarykovo Nadrazi (southbound), meaning it actually traverses a large part of Prague, at this portion in Karlin (if I understand the boroughs correctly). The street under this arch of the viaduct is Sokolovska, although the viaduct crosses 5-6 streets along the way, depending on what you're counting. One of the most interesting streets, not seen here, is Rohanske nabrezi, which used to be a railway line, meaning that until the 2017-2021 reconstruction, coal soot from steam locomotives was still visible on the arches: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negrelli_Viaduct#/media/File:Northwestern_Railway_Negrelli_Viaduct_eastern_side.jpg In any case, getting back to my own photo, when facing west through the Sokolovska arch, it is often possible to get good sunset pictures, as the sun aligns quite well with the arch, without any buildings blocking the view. I still haven't been able to get a good camera to get this shot (I've been having technical problems with my cameras for a number of years, with a minimal budget to address the problem), but I have even been able to get the shot with my cameraphones, as you can see here. For this shot, I was using my Nokia 301.

I took this on New Year's Eve, after getting to Cardiff in the nick of time to meet my friends. I took several other cameraphone shots along the way, although nothing to speak of. I originally had hoped to get the number of this unit, but again I was using a cameraphone, so the exposure from the headlights was too much. This had been my first trip on Great Western after it reverted to its pre-1948 name, after having operated as "First Great Western" (in reference to First Bus) since privatization, and the creation of the train operating companies (TOC's) in 1996.