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These pictures were taken along the Union Pacific West Line to Geneva using the Olympus D-320L digital camera. Some pics were originally 640x480, others were taken in 1024 x 768. To fit on this page, and to download in a reasonable amount of time, the pictures shown here have been reduced to 200 x 150 pixel resolution.
I can't remember not liking trains. By the time I was 8, I was taking pictures of the Chessie System at my grandparents house along the Greenbrier river deep in the mountains of West Virginia. I would hang out with my camera near a set of tunnels connected by a bridge over the river. I began working on a 4 x 8 layout in the 6th or 7th grade. When I was a teenager I drove a small passenger train at Hamel's Amusement Park, in Shreveport Louisiana. It had three coaches and was powered by a Jeep 230 straight six.
Now I'm commuting for a living and riding the Chicago passenger rail service, Metra. A few pictures here show the insides of the coaches, which are 80 ft. long, hold 156 people each, and are double deckers. I always try to get a window seat on the upper level, and often keep my camera in hand when I don't have my face buried in my laptop. The train ride from into Chicago takes a little more than one hour, and makes stops in Wheaton, Winfield, and West Chicago, just to name a few that start with W.
Above, you can see the upper level on one of the stainless steel passenger cars. Below, several shots of the engines used- note that each Metra engine is named after a different Chicago suburb. I have also taken an Amtrak train from Chicago Union Station to downtown Milwaukee. I met my wife and her brother there one evening for the Milwaukee State Fair.
I requested, and eventually received, a tour of one of the Amtrak Superliners before the passengers were allowed to board. I took pictures, but it wasn't with the digital camera. Perhaps I'll request another walkthrough. The cabins were small, but very nice. If one has the money, traveling in your own personal hotel room is hard to beat. I hope to take a overnight rail trip with my family someday.
A good friend of mine, Robert Della Pietra, loves to take pictures of trains. We chase trains when we get together. The last time he came to visit, we took a few pictures but that was a full year before I bought the digital camera.
If you would like to download the original, full sized train pictures, you can download the entire zipped collection off of the links page. If you would like to see pictures I took while riding Amtrak, visit my Amtrak 2002 Page.
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