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Railroads
have greatly interested me from my very early childhood memories
and onward -- memories which go back to the last years of the steam
era and the Third Avenue Elevated in Manhattan.
I have
been most of all fascinated by
urban electric rail transit -- subways,
trolleys, light rail -- and I have been on all of the
systems, and the great preponderance of the route mileage,
currently operating in the
U.S. and Canada. My transit interest started during my
very young Brooklyn days. We lived a block and a half away from the Church Avenue
trolley,
one of the three last surviving streetcar lines in that borough, and
we fairly
frequently used it.
Often it took us to the New York subway system, and to the wonders that its labyrinth of lines contained.
I was always fascinated by low growling roar from the
old IRT cars accelerating, and the occasional sparks viewed
from station platforms along the four-track stretch under
Flatbush Ave.
For the main lines and
branch lines of the continent, over the decades I have enjoyed observing
the patterns of
tracks, often with switches,
or crossing each other. And I have always been
intrigued by the
variety and urgent visual impact of
signals.
I have photographed railroad crossings in a
great variety of settings coast to coast.
Locomotives, statically powerful or rolling
through countryside or urban settings, have always
provoked feelings of joy. And rolling stock,
freight cars of one kind or
another set off in comely or other eye-catching landscapes,
this too has frequently captured my attention.
Only a modest number of images are presented in these
sections. There is much more to add -- some day. |