Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: Tabor

While playing around with Elsemuko's Technicolor script in Gimp (still unsuccessfully, unfortunately, although not due to the script not working), I accidentally discovered that if I used Gimp's standard auto-equalize feature, I would get this, which rather than looking Technicolor, looks more like a bad Autochrome. Oh well....I still like it. It looks kind of like an old postcard, I think.

Here's my alternate shot of Hrad Kotnov. The foreground is a bit dark, I know, but I wanted to show the variation of architectural styles.

Now...back to the electric railway to Bechyne. This was the train I took, not the preserved original one (which does occassionally run railfan trips), but the modern one, however loose a sense. This Class 113 electric is probably about 30 years old or more, and would never normally be used for much but switching the yard of a large mainline station, but obviously it would be wasteful and bad for the track on this single-track branch to have a 163 or 363 class running this service. The dim light you see here is partly an illusion, as it was slightly gloomy out by this time of day, it was late in the day, and I only had 200 ISO film. This, however, was one of my last shots before I switched to Tri-X, which is 400.

Tabor's castle, Hrad Kotnov, was built in 1420, although like many castles it has been rebuilt many times since. The tower is the only original aboveground part still intact. The current castle is more the product of the 1532 reconstruction, after it was burned down in a fire, and the 1613 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt into a support facility for a brewery, which was physically connected in 1844. The brewery remained in operation until 1981, and then the castle fell into disuse before being reconstructed, as both a brewery and tourist attraction, in 2004.

The Stara Radnice, or Old Town Hall, is another of the architectural attractions of Tabor, having been built in 1521, with two reconstruction projects in the 17th Century (when it was rebuilt into Baroque style) and the 19th Century (1878, when it was rebuilt back into Gothic).

Named after the church of the same name on Mt. Tabor, where Jesus is said to have revealed his identity as God's son. The original Church of the Transfiguration is long gone now, having been demolished in the 12th Century (a new church, the third to stand on Mt. Tabor, was built in 1924, and still exists today), but this church, in Tabor, Bohemia, was built in circa 1480-1512, and rebuilt in Baroque style in 1677. The church tower is open to the public, although the tourist information I've found says that you have to climb 250 stairs to get to the top.

This was when I arrived in Tabor, where I had been a number of times before riding through, but had never noticed the size of this station. It sort of looks like a minor through or even branchline station that's been multiplied in length, and maybe that's what the architects intended in order to save money. Tabor is actually a terminal station and a junction, however, as the line the Bechyne originates here, commonly referred to as the František Křižík Electric Railway. This line happens to be the oldest in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, being constructed in 1903, but more on that in a moment...