Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: express

This was from March 25th, making it one of the earlier mainline videos I got after New Year's Break. I don't expect this to make it into the NRHS show (I don't think), so it's ideal for iPernity. The locomotive is a Class 162 electric, with 4667 horsepower (3480Kw) and a maximum speed of 140Km/h (86 m.p.h.), although it's going far slower here.

I'm saving the video and photos of Ex-CSD #498.022, the "Albatros," for my NRHS shows, so here's another shot I got while at Radotin, of an outbound express.

This is not at Luzna, but back in Prague at Nadrazi Praha-Smichov. I shot this photo as I walked by on my way to the bus which would take me to meet the return trip of #498.022 at Nadrazi Praha-Radotin.

This was a lucky pan shot gone bad that nevertheless gave me a nice shot of an express train passing Nadrazi Hostivar in Prague.

A number of express trains don't stop in Hostivar, so I've been able to get quite a few action shots there. The snowy days are the best, though, since powdered snow exaggerates the sensation of speed.

In this photo the train is harder to make out, but that's kind of the point. The huge cloud of snow enveloping the train further adds to the dramatic sense of speed. The crazy thing is that few trains running through Hostivar are doing much more than 60 Km/h.

This to me is a classic pan shot, although many people get shots like this without panning, so I'm not sure if my opinion is really correct.

This is my favorite of the four shots in the pan, although I've chosen to post all four.

I've done a number of express pans, of course, and train pans generally, but it's only a rare opportunity when I can get an express in the snow. Snow, or at least powder, inevitably magnifies the sensation of speed in a photo, or for that matter in real life.

Here you can see the size of the cranes being used to build the new station facilities at Cercany, which appear really to be overkill given the small size of most of what's being built. Nevertheless, the reason I posted this shot is that I like how the locomotive, CD #363117-3, looks.

I didn't do too much train watching on my most recent trip to the U.S., but I did manage to snap some pictures in Harrisburg on my way through. These material handling cars are used by Amtrak for mail and parcels, and are coupled to Amtrak's regular trains. Basically converted boxcars his makes them the fastest boxcars, and the fastest non-passenger cars, in the U.S., as some operate (in mail service) as fast as 110 m.p.h.

While I was going through the CD of horrible Ritz scans, I also found this one to be really bad, yet previously uploaded in unedited form, so I decided to limit my humiliation and upload an edit of it too.

This was my first ever shot of an Amtrak Acela Express high speed tilt train, in this case trailed (notice the markers are lit) by power car (locomotive) #2031. We were over a half hour late, if I'm not mistaken, which was symptomatic of the larger problem of the Acela Express program being scandalously botched. Now, over six years after I took this, it's still a debacle of scandalously bad engineering, management, and substandard performance, and I think that anyone who follows Amtrak (with a clear, unbiased mind) will see the immense incompetence and probably corruption that went into creating this problem. It's also been a scandalous waste of money, not because Amtrak shouldn't get buckets of money right now, but because if the money is to be spent, it should produce quality results. When I took it from Philadelphia to NYP on this particular day, however, it was a fun ride, though. :-)

Here's another shot of a Class 185, only this time pulling into Leeds New Station. It wasn't going anywhere close to its full 125 m.p.h. speed, of course, but was blurred because I was shooting at f4 and 1/30, I think.

Not convinced that I had gotten the earlier shot of 185140, I moved in as close as I could while still getting the whole front end, and used my flash. This was what I got, decent, but surprisingly not as good as the first shot. It's that ugly bleaching from the flash, as usual.

Among the newest trains in Britain are these Class 185 DMUs, which are intended for express and longer-distance regional services outside of electrified territory. Obviously, they often wander in and out from under the wires, and here's an example of that at Leeds, where 185140 is waiting to depart with a service to Middlesborough. In order to allow them to make full use of the British rail network and not hold up traffic, Class 185s are authorized to run at 125 m.p.h. where track conditions permit, as on this service. I originally never expected this shot to come out properly, as I shot it at f4 and 1/45, which I was sure would blur, but in reality it came out quite crisp, to my amazement.

This was after we got to Leeds, in the rain. I decided to attempt some photos, though, since I'm not in Leeds everyday, and I saw these Class 158s waiting to go.

This was the Class 158 that took me and some friends to a concert in Leeds. I wasn't the only railfan, but I was the only one with a camera. :-)