Loose_Grip/Pete's photos with the keyword: travel

The beautiful gold and silver of the Denver & Rio Grande Railway on the locomotives and baggage car contrasts with the light covering of snow on the approach to Glenwood Canyon in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver. The conductor allowed me to take this view from the open door of our passenger train travelling from Denver to Salt Lake City (where we changed in the middle of the night to an Amtrak train to San Francisco). The lead locomotive is F9 diesel 5771. This was the last private long distance passenger train in the USA but it has long since been taken over by Amtrak. We were moving homes via San Francisco & Australia after a 2 year assignment in New Orleans to live in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

One of the marble minarets of the Taj Mahal.

In the UK you normally associate Roman remains with ruins or partially ruined buildings but since it was cleaned up the Pyramid by the Porta San Paolo in Rome looks like it was built last year! In fact the Pyramid of Caius Cestius was built in 12 BC which explains why the Aurelian Wall, itself built in 275 AD, abuts either side of it. An interesting fact about the pyramid is that it was built by Caius Cestius' freed slaves in his honour in 330 days. Proving the old proverb: One volunteer is worth ten pressed men. The Porta San Paolo on the right was one of the major gateways into imperial Rome through the city wall built by Emperor Aurelian and extended in the 5th century.

Munich’s Marienplatz in the evening light.

An early morning walk around the town. The recent history of this part of France can be told by the history of this bridge over the River Oise in Compiègne. It was built in 1949 replacing a bridge destroyed in WWII which itself replaced a 1923 bridge destroyed in WWI. The original dated from 1733.

City street scene looking up Powell Street at Sutter near Union Square with Powell-Hyde cable car number 10 heading downhill.

Sunset over Calpe beach where the light turns the 322m high limestone mass of Peñon d'Ifach from white to red.

Passengers must only cross the line by means of the footbridge provided... but these ladies are taking the most direct route to market with their fruit passing in front of diesel DF.1264, Chinese-built for Myanmar Railways in 1995, waiting to depart from Yangon's main station.

Our De Haviland Twin Otter takes off from Aden airport (ex-RAF Khormaksar) en route to Sana'a with Crater in the distance. This view is looking south.

The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven is situated on top the former Aztec sacred precinct near the Templo Mayor on the northern side of the Plaza de la Constitución. It was built in sections from 1573 to 1813 around the original church that was constructed soon after the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan. It's not your eyes, the building was structurally unstable because much of Mexico City is built upon the dried lakebed of Lake Texcoco. Restoration work beginning in the 1990s stabilized the cathedral and it was removed from the endangered list in 2000

Dwarfed by the Rocky Mountains a Canadian Pacific freight train heading by 4 unidentified locos - probably EMD SD40s - passes Kananaskis heading east towards Calgary. I was attending a Mobil Oil Tectonic Geology course through the mountains and should have been listening to the description of the rock outcrops here but the chance of a photo of a train in this fabulous landscape was too much of a diversion. Mount Yamnuska, right, & Old Goat Peak, centre, are part of the Rocky Mountain Front Range and the abrupt change between the steeply dipping, folded & thrusted rocks in the west and the flat lying Interior Plains rocks to the east is dramatic. Here Middle Cambrian carbonates have overridden Cretaceous Belly River Formation along the McConnell thrust fault. (I may not have been listening but I still have the field notes!)

Only 50 years later! No steam engines or snow this time. Verdun is overshadowed by the terrible slaughter of the First World War battle but today it is a very pleasant small city. This view over the river Meuse and the Notre-Dame cathedral was taken from our hotel room window at the Jardins du Mess. Before our stay I had wondered about the hotel name and in what condition we would find it.... In fact the Mess refers to the officer’s mess, the role that this building played in WWI.

Verdun station in the snow. The semaphore signal is pulled off & North British 2-8-0 140C246, built in Glasgow in 1917, slowly pulls away light engine by the bridge prior to dropping on to its cement train in the station to the left & departing tender first around the bend in the distance to the north. These trains still ran in August 1972 when I passed through Verdun again & lasted until September 1975 I believe. A locomotive of this class, 287, pulled the last regular steam train on the SNCF between Troyes & Sainte Colombe on 24th September 1975. According to AJECTA who have restored 231 there are eight of these engines preserved, 246 is not one of them. I participated in several railtours pulled by 140C231 in the late 1980s when I lived in Paris - must scan some of those photos.

I lived and worked in Yemen in the early 1990s at a time when the country was not at war so we could travel everywhere. This is Shibam city from the air looking north, taken from the De Haviland Twin Otter on a company flight from Sana'a to the seismic base in Block 32. The pilot dropped down and circled the city so we could get a better look. Shibam, the Manhattan of the Desert, is a magical place from the air or on the ground. It must have been a breathtaking vision of civilisation for any desert traveller crossing the Empty Quarter to look over the high cliffs of Wadi Hadramaut and see this beautiful city rising from the wadi floor. It is a great shame that the country and its friendly people have been so damaged in the last years with no obvious end to their woes in sight.

The stainless steel coaches of Amtrak's well-named Sunset Limited catch the glint of the West Texas sunset during our stop in El Paso station! I was travelling the 2350 miles from San Francisco and there was still another 24 hours to go before arriving home in New Orleans.

It's a good job that traffic light is showing red! A two car Aveiro to Sernada do Vouga diesel railcar takes priority over the car on the Rio Vouga road/railway bridge just to the south of Sernada station. The way it should be! HFF everyone. Have a safe weekend.

Rio de Janeiro lights. Sunset over Botafoga as seen from the Sugarloaf Mountain cable car.

In conditions fitting for an English summer, Stanier Jubilee 4-6-0 45690 Leander races away from Settle junction onto the 1 in 100 gradient of the S&C with the Fellsman railtour from Lancaster to Carlisle.