Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: railway

Buffalo Depew has one of the worst reputations of any Amtrak station, being an "Amshack" wedged under a group of highway bridges. However, on this trip it appeared to be in reasonably good shape.

Rome station is minor enough so that even though Amtrak don't run many proper expresses outside of the Northeast Corridor anymore, many trains skip it. The Maple Leaf, however, does not. That clock you can just barely see on the left is new, but the station is from the 1910's, if I'm not mistaken. I don't have my books with me, and as usual the internet isn't much use for finding the date.

Back in the 1990's, this integrated transport station opened near Carousel Mall in Syracuse, incorporating Amtrak, long-distance buses, and for a time OnTrack rail transit services. Now OnTrack is gone, but Amtrak and the buses remain. It's one of the newest large stations in New York.

The current Rochester station is another Amshack, although in good shape. Given Amtrak's funding difficulties, the good condition of most of the trains and facilities that I saw on this trip seemed better than I remember.

Here's a sticker advertising the Wi-Fi. This marked the first ever time that I had used Wi-Fi on the train, although in reality Wi-Fi service has been used on trains almost from its beginnings, as it's far cheaper and less technically challenging than many other communications technologies like railphones, for example. The railyard in the background is the international railyard on the U.S. side in Niagara Falls, and we weren't far from the immigration center. The locomotives switching the yard were old EMD Geeps that had been upgraded to run driverless.

The ceiling and luggage racks were in good condition, and mostly original. Digital destination boards had been added, though.

Introduced in 1976, most Amfleet coaches and cafes still in service are from the first series, the Amfleet I series, which had vestibules at both ends. However, most of these have been rebuilt and repainted several times, and have been used in far more roles than they were originally intended. Today, they're used throughout Amtrak's routes in the Northeast and Midwest U.S., and Eastern Canada. They were even the standard on Amtrak's Metroliner services from the early 1980's until the introduction of Acela Express services. When I boarded this one, I noticed that the upholstery had been redone, that the electrical outlets were still there, and that Wi-Fi had been added. These new seats appear to be fatter than the originals, without the uncomfortable center armrest that plagued the original Amfleet I coaches.

I took a photo of this arch just because I liked it.

The modern-day entrance to the tracks is underground, accessed via the portal between the two ticket kiosks. The kiosk on the right, in the foreground, was the one operating on this day. I arrived very early, around 0630, before they opened, so I had to wait.

Here's another shot of Toronto Union Station, showing the flag display. From the look of it, all of them are Canada-related, rather than international. The words above them are cities througout Canada.

My solution to the air travel fiasco was to take the "Maple Leaf" from Toronto to Utica. The Maple Leaf is an international train operated jointly by VIA Rail Canada, Canada's national passenger train operator, and Amtrak, VIA's American equivalent. The schedule is 7 hours, 9 minutes long, which is mostly due to a great deal of padding for the Niagara Falls stop, where the border control is. This rather elaborate station is Toronto Union Station, the busiest train station in Canada, hosting 200,000 passengers a day. Although it was opened in 1927, it's full of World War I memorials and references.

I've been sitting on this video ever since I made it two years ago. I always intended to release it, though, since I like Germany and I love German trains. I've never done a German railway video this long before, either. I hope you all enjoy it.

The reconstruction of the Narodni Trida Metro station has dragged on for over two years now, and this was how far it had gotten as of July, 2013. You can vaguely see the tunnel on right, but from the train you don't notice the construction. At the time I took this, the station still looked the same from the train, and indeed trains have continued to operate, albeit without stopping. Since that time, the station interior has been stripped out, and will probably be replaced. The station had accumulated a lot of water damage over the years, and not just from the 2002 flood, so I suppose they wanted to do something about it. Since I took this photo, this project has accelerated dramatically, and now a large building is being constructed over this site, the purpose of which I haven't read about yet. Presumably, the station is close to complete by now.

Here's another shot of the rear end. You can see where some of the windows have been removed.

DPP #5521 is a modified Tatra T3 tram that's been modified to do track telemetry work, and this is the first time I've been able to get a photo of it. This was at Husinecka.

Given the dramatic transformation of Hlavni Nadrazi's platforms and lower levels, it is easy to forget that it is still under restoration after a number of years. In fact, it's been under reconstruction for most of the time I've lived in Prague. Here's one of the reasons. You can see how the frontage is rotting away, either from water damage, frost damage, and/or acid rain, and this will be one of the last things the construction crews take care of after they do the interior, which far more passengers see. That project, incidentally, is almost done. I got to see it a few days ago and it looks great.

Here's a shot of the flood barriers that I mentioned earlier. This one was built around one of the shafts into the Malostranska Metro station, which if I'm not mistaken is for a cargo elevator (does anybody know?). The ones along the river looked roughly the same.

I don't have the number of this EMU, but it's definitely a Ceske Drahy Class 471, or "City Elefant." This viaduct is one of several Karlin has had over the years, and is one of the older ones surviving. Here it crosses Sokolovska on the way to Holesovice in the north of the city.