choo-choo

Charming photographs!

thank you-- tomorrow there should be more, but now it's time for bed

lovely!! i want more!!

I like trains -- the sound of trains, the rumbling of trains, the lonely horn blowing on trains. And I like train pics, too. Thanks.

Stream chains are enchanting, Mary - we have similar excursions puffing into the forests of West Oz.

I love trains. Thanks for the photos! I will be moving to an area where I'll hear the trains go by. I'm looking forward to hearing the sounds of the train again.

okay-- there were 727 images to sort and register when I came in last night. the first 400 images are now registered
and I decided that this will be the cover page for a series of articles that will be linked in to it

these are my potential future pages

people who love trains-- us locophiles
people of the trains-- those who make it run
the train-- exhibit of special frames of the train-details
the trip-- from beginning to end prague -cercany
the trip--cercany-prague

and of course the bugs of cercany--because I had nearly two hours for bug-duty


with 730 frames-- I have to break them up and mke severl pges.
it involves much-much work becasue i register each frame in a log
and then the editing-signature, resizing
the logging of frames used-date-title

and then finally the uploading
and then the registering- logging of the links

nd all of it is kept by paper
except links which are copied onto the various diefferent places

so it's very slow, tedious work that is done over days as I sort through images and decide how to use them

and also i am expecting some new additions this week-- from outerspace-- okay upperspace

i kept running to the door to see if the mail hd come, but they're not here yet.

shari
" I love trains. Thanks for the photos! I will be moving to an area where I'll hear the trains go by. "

europe lives on the train-- cars are problematic, but trains are wonderful and take you where you want to go--

the US made a serious mistake when it domped the railway system and promoted the gaz guzzling cars to the road-- because trains are far superior and the networks in Europe are amazing and now 150years old-- and in Czech Republic as in Austria and Germany, there are all kinds of trains-- all colors, shapes, conditions and they go places you can only dream about--

Renda

" Nice little introduction to the train ride, Mary. I want the full trip though."


sorry not possible for reasons above

I will try to create the above oages--but it takes time and as it is people of the train will have to be split as well as going to Cercany

so this one day may end up making 8-10 pages of pictures because Gather system is very unreliable and the Amazon Shorts still knocks out images uploading

Gather never fixes anything and it is remarkably slow for being in the supersonic and hyperconductor age

I believe the decision to go with trucks on highways over trains on tracks as the main strategy for intra-national shipping in the US was a combined one between the US government and its sweetheart at the time, Standard Oil.

The names may change, but...

thanks for the reminder but ws out and with 700 plus, just listing all the frames takes time-- that's about 20pages of notebook paper of nothing but frame nembers and short description

probably not as there are many factors that influence this

"as the main strategy for intra-national shipping ..."
1. the US railroads were private and therefore combative not cooperative
2. European railways are government run and subsidized-- so it's not a combat zone of who owns which rails and who can run which trains over them

3. competition and capitalism--or at lest American capitalism doesn't work efficiently for some things-- rail transport is one since to have effective railways there has to be local, state and national networks and in this Europe has great advantage over US-- as the railways were originally meant to be used as public transportation for the benefit of the countries and not for the private companies that got fat on them and then allowed their rails to degenerate

and this is the mjor problem in US-- the railroad companies were grossly corrupt and so long as they could profit enormously off the people using them, they were happy to be cmbative with each other and not maintain rails, tunnels, trestles, bridges, etc

and then finally in 60's truck transportation became feasible and came in direct competition with rail because trucks can move quicker and have greater mobility-- and all kinds of companies could suddenly get into the business of shipping

especially with refrigerated trucking and airfreight

so the railways came apart and major cities strted tearing up their trolly and small track sy7stems while cars were fairly cheap and accessible for Americans and it ws the response to individual demands rather than cuddling up with a single company-- to say that is to grossly oversimplify and just be immature. Americans didn't want public transpoertation any longer becasue they could have their own cars

and the rails were neglected through capitalism and as a result truckng became the standard

but in Europe, new rails are constantly alid down and every year in Prague, certain parts of this city are under constant construction as the rails are torn out annually or every two years for rplacements. Prague is built on shifting clay--and if the weather is as hot as this year and then cold in the winter, the rails will pop out of the ground or they can bend-- and they are standard rails that you see in the US for the trains-- however, the ground shifts radically and with intense heat followed by cold, the ground also contracts and expands radically

and it is really freaky to see a length of rail that has jumped out of the ground to form a 6-8ft arch that you can walk under--

but the rails are under constant replacement and maintenace-- and this type of responsibility nobody in the US wants--they just want profit. It's a problem.

The US does a lot of talking to the rest of the world about environment, but it presents a very bad example overall--

and getting transportation networks to cooperate is basically unAmerican. Ask anyone in the Airline business and they will tell you that each major airline dominates a city and tries to manipulate the home advantage and tickets from one airline to another are very difficult to honor or transfer.

crazy--

Beautiful, as always, Mary. My favorite in this collection is the close-up of the steam.

thanks for dropping by-- I thought that I was on the redlist-- no, is not a close-up of the steam as I was in the 4th car-- but I caught steam release off the wheels when they were working in the yard and trotting along the train as it was rehitching the tender to the cars on the siding--

and the strange thing is with the Czech locomotives is that when they head home, they reverse the engine so that the nose is against the tender

to me it looks backass backward, but it's the third time I've seen it done so there must be a reason for it because it is deliverate

at first i thought it was to cut the smoke adn this might be it because when the engine is reversed the smoke can not fly into the engineer's face or obstruct his vision-- but actually I don't remember seeing it done the first time

so maybe they consult a windbag/ metereologist before rehitching the engine and heading home.