I’m really not a train guy. Despite all the images on this blog suggesting otherwise, I couldn’t tell you the first detail about locomotives or gauges, routes or liveries.
But in the gleaming – or dilapidated – vehicles, the frenetic stations and the detritus, I see stories. Of adventure. Of tragedy. Beginnings and endings. Speed and stasis. The machines that deliver us to the moments: the defining experiences of travel…
Amidst the morning commute at Copenhagen’s central station.
Crazy lines. Columns, grids, angles, lines — it’s all here in Madrid.
The sound seems to carry farther on cold mornings. Sharp little snapping sounds as shoes click along the floor, the odd bit of salt underfoot.
Sunday morning at an unknown station.
Speeding Saturday Selfie.
A lone passenger at York University station. Empty trains, empty halls.
Morning rush on the platform at Spadina subway station.
Checking in, new and old-school. Seen at Bloor Station.
A late night train near the Eiffel Tower, from my brief visit to Paris in December.
In an empty and decaying train station, just before the rain, visions of journeys past.
From a trip to my old neighborhood.
One of the luggage windows at an abandoned railway station in Kisumu, Kenya. The last train departed in 2006, but locals say that service is on its way to being restored.
A quick shot going up an escalator, somewhere in the north part of the Paris Metro system.
Early evening at the station in Nimes.
Street-level view of the train station in Nimes, France as the tracks rumble overhead.
A vintage feel.
A brief break in the action and a deserted platform at the station in Nimes, France.
On Platform A at the SNCF station in Nimes, France, shortly after a local train unloaded passengers.
An escalator in the massive Châtelet station in the Paris Metro. In the center of the city, the station was just over 100 years old when I took this shot back in 2001. No need for digital film grain and dust filters on this shot — actual film grain and dust comes from the Ilford HP5 I used at the time, and the Nikon scanner to make the digital image. I miss the darkroom days.