Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: tunnel

After changing trains via the London Underground widened lines from Paddington to St. Pancras, to took the Eurostar to Brussels-Midi. For several years, these were the fastest trains I had ever ridden, as they operate at 190 m.p.h. in Britain. I recently found out through research (not my stopwatch) that I broke my record several months after I took this video, as I had unknowingly ridden at 330 km/h, or 205 m.p.h., on the TGV Duplex between Strasbourg and Paris. I remember the ride was fast, but that's it. The train was very overcrowded, I didn't have a window seat, and ultimately I didn't take any photos or video, which is a shame.

I don't know as much about Tunel Blanka as some people, but honestly, how much do people need to know? The project has been going on for years, turning Hradcanska and the north side of Letna into a dirty, noisy construction site, with blasting going on. The blasting has resulted several times in lethally dangerous cave-ins that have opened giant holes in the ground in random locations in parkland full of tourists and hikers, and even the cut-and-cover method of construction often being used isn't what the city said would be used, resulting in massive disruption beyond what they had promised (even if admittedly it's not as dangerous as the blasting). Then there's the purpose....to encourage automobile use and the car culture, increasing traffic congestion in the city and diverting business out of it, potentially collapsing the local economy and leaving taxpayers with an astronomical bill for construction. The reason for this? Apparently they think people are ignorant enough to believe that freeways reduce congestion instead of increasing it. You'd think that after Communism people would know better, but apparently the Communists' ideas about urban transport haven't been adequately discredited, even though everywhere freeways have been built, everywhere in the world, they've been catastrophic failures in traffic abatement.....at least until the local economy collapses to such a degree that all the people leave.

This was just a random, lucky shot with the Contina. When I saw the scene, I knew that I wanted it.

Finally...the passenger subway opened in Cercany in mid-November, although I don't know the exact day. This was my first time in it, and I noted that already it had been vandalised. I heard that the train was coming in on Nastupiste 2, meaning Platform 2, so I went to Kolej 2, or Track 2, forgetting that there were 4 tracks and two new platforms. An undercover police officer, probably looking for the person who did this, promptly asked me what I was doing on the wrong platform. Not realising my mistake, I eventually figured out what he was saying, and changed platforms in time to get my train. This was the first time a police officer had ever questioned me in the Czech Republic for taking photographs, but at least someone is finally trying to stop the vandalism on this line, as I've been saying from the beginning that it's getting wrecked faster than it's being built. I do note, though, that this year the policing seems to have been more determined, and indeed the vandalism has gone down slightly.

This tunnel, not original, but made out of a pipe found somewhere, is part of a park that used to be a railway freight yard. The tour guide said the yard was originally called Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof, although all the signs I saw said Bruckenmeisterei, so whichever one it is. Much of the infrastructure, all of it steam-era, is still intact, as the yard was in control of the Soviets (as was all of the rail infrastructure in Berlin) after World War II, and lacking adequate international traffic to keep it going, it was eventually abandoned, with almost everything sitting abandoned until 1989, when it became the park that it is now.

Here's another longtime favorite, even if, like many of my other California pictures, it's a bit overexposed because of the blazing hot weather we had on that trip. This was up in the Sierra Nevada, too. I love the realism of this shot, the fact that these SD40T-2s were so typical of California in those days, and dirty from their intended and frequent service in tunnels.

This was sort of one of those Lomo moments when I was walking to the Muzeum tram stop behind the Narodni Muzeum. The shot just looked good, so I took it.