Train of the Week

So here are the said pictures from the little trek of mine in the beautiful Pacific Northwest last week that I want to share with you. And please bear with me since some of them may deserve more editing than I've motivated enough to give them (and since I'm no artist or photographer, I have yet to learn how to work the software properly...). I have been out and about lately and do not have many chances to look up the usual content, but hopefully the pictures provide a taste for something different (and maybe refreshing?) once in a while.

I had the privilege again to thread through a railroad related adventure in between my work duties. This time around,I had the opportunity to briefly discover what used to be a major passenger railroad station in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, the Tacoma Union Station . Given that it was a union station, multiple railroads had passenger rail service to and from this grand station of the Beaux-Arts architecture. It is not clear to me however which railroads there have been, but by its physical location on the ex-Great Northern and the ex-Milwaukee Road Olympian banner, those two must have at least been patrons under the distinct copper dome of this landmark. Like the fallen flags [of railroads], the center of attention of the mesmeric flow of travelers this station once has been, the Tacoma Union Station has not seen another since the year 1984. A freeway lied where the tracks were, what an ironic, sad, but true statement of where the romance of riding the rails had gone. Union...

I thought of posting this as an extra in between the week. Then I didn't feel like bumping the rest of the posts down prematurely. So I decided to just use it as a lazy weekly update instead. After almost a year of being camera-less, I have finally bitten the bullet and gone for an upgrade. I won't pretend I know much about photography other than some of the terms I've learned from a beginners class and the fact that I like playing with the settings and trying different things. So here I present you some train pictures and a short train film (it was the first time I filmed anything with a dSLR and I focused on the wrong spot, behind the train at the little signal shack, so please bear with me). Here are a few links to the keywords related to the pictures I'm about to show for your curious minds: Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies , Peter Von Tiesenhausen , Canadian Pacific . There are also other pictures I'll post I've taken just randomly around the beau...

It has been a while since I’ve talked about fast trains. This week, we’ll do just that. Let me introduce you a beautiful derivative of German Engineering from Siemens, the next Channel Tunnel High Speed Train, the Velaro D based British Rail Class 374 , the e320 Eurostar electric multiple unit . Most likely to be introduced sometime in 2015, the e320 will rule the Channel along side the current Eurostar, the Alstom push-pull  TGV, British Rail  Class 373 , aka le train à grande vitesse transmanche super train. Though the Eurostars will not be the only trains operating in the Channel Tunnel at the time, Deutsche Bahn ’s London-Frankfurt InterCity Express service will have hopefully begun by then, with DB’s own Velaro D, or DB Class 407s (and we are off topic). A mock up of the e320 shown in Britain For the safety of Channel Tunnel operation, the e320 has a consist of M-T-M-T-T-M-T-M-M-T-M-T-T-M-T-M (M denotes motor, or powered cars, T denotes trailer, or unpowered cars;...