trains

machine ghost

There are trains in my family's background. My grandfather was a lineman working in Texas in the 1930s (my father was born in Dallas before the family moved to Savannah Georgia). My great-great grandfather owned a railroad in Georgia. I've always had a fascination with trains, especially as a little kid. Before my grandmother started to fly between Atlanta and Savannah to visit us, she would travel on the Nancy Hanks II, an earlier generation diesel. My toy trains as a kid were models of diesels. I didn't care all that much for the steam models; they were too "old fashioned".

There's something about the raw horsepower of machines of this type. They don't go fast, but they're the closest thing to an irresistible force I can think of. And there's the hybrid nature of using the diesel to drive an generator to drive the electric systems that drive the wheels. My Prius is a hybrid, but nothing like this. The D-E is probably the most powerful and efficient railroad engine every built.

You might think them ugly, but I think they're beautiful and well engineered.

I caught these three over a two day period parked on a track just outside of Dupont, within walking distance from my hotel. The trains gave me a destination while out walking in the afternoons when I was done for the day at JBLM. I'd carry my E-M5 with me and experiment with various compositions. So far the photos worth showing are pretty mundane with regard to composition. But I don't care. I like them and that's all that really matters. Perhaps I'll go back and play around with the files some more in post.

tough locomotive

tacoma rail