I visited the Sound Transit operations and maintenance facility in the south part of Seattle for meeting recently. This is the original facility but they have added one in Bellevue and another will be built in Federal Way in the coming years. Plenty of the trains were parked in the storage tracks including the original cars and the new ones getting delivered by Siemens for the extensions due to open soon. Too good to pass up the chance to grab some shots with my phone.
The city of Federal Way between Seattle and Tacoma is the end point of a project I am working on. The transit center in the middle of the city is being rebuilt to accommodate the light rail system’s arrival and that includes the parking garage that is currently there. From the top of the garage, you get a good view of the work underway. You also get a close up view of a slightly unusual clock. It is designed to look like it is a giant log with a clock built in. It clearly isn’t wood but it is a little different!
One evening, while up near Everett, I had a bit of spare time on my hands. I had noticed a park along the waterfront called Picnic Park and had noted that I would check it out at some point. This was a good time to try finding out what it was like. The weather was not great but, with time on my hands, I headed down there. It is a small park along the water and there is a bridge across the railroad to reach it. As I walked across the bridge, there was a nice view down to where the coast curves around and the trees along the shore had some nice fall colors.
With the sun popping in and out on a regular basis, I thought this would be a good place if a train was coming. As it happened, the Sounder commuter rail train from Seattle to Everett was not far off so I decided to wait for it to come through. A few minutes later it came in to view. There was a family with a young child standing on the bridge waving to the crew and, when I looked at the photos at home, I could see both crew waving back. It was a pretty short train. The Sounder North has not been too successful and the commuter rail ridership is well down due to COVID. I guess there is no need for more cars just now.
A short distance from our house is an old railcar that is sitting on spare land gradually decaying. It has been here as long as we have and I suspect a lot longer than that. I’m not sure what it is resting on but it does seem to be listing a bit more these days than it was the first time I saw it. I have driven past it on many occasions and often thought that I should take a picture of it. I recently happened to be walking along the road rather than driving so figured I should stop and get a shot. Since it is summer, the plants are grown up around the side of the road so it is a bit harder to get a clear shot of it. I used the longer lens on the phone and stitched together some shots. It would be better to shoot this later in the day when the light is nicer but we shall see if I make the effort to go back – and maybe take a better camera?
In all of my visits to the waterfront at Mukilteo, it would have been neglectful if I hadn’t had a quick poke around at the railroad station. This is for Sounder commuter rail trains to Seattle and is across from the new ferry terminal. It will be interesting to see whether WSDOT’s Amtrak Cascades trains stop there in the future to connect with the ferries but currently they do not (and, at the time of writing, the Cascades services north of Seattle are suspended anyway.)
The station is not that old since the Sounder service has only been around since the 2000s. Consequently, it is a nicely thought out design rather than an old station that has been upgraded. It includes some artwork with a local theme with stone sculptures of local boat designs. A footbridge takes you over the tracks to the far platforms. I doubt I will ever have the need to use it but it was fun to look around on a quiet weekend.
Prior to the 1960s, the Isle of Wight had an extensive rail network. The Beeching cuts reduced it to one line, from Ryde to Shanklin. It was electrified and the rolling stock was initially old London Underground stock from the 1920s. This was in use when I was a youngster but it got replaced in the late 80s by the new(er) Class 483s. These were also London Underground castoffs – this time from the 1938 stock. They had gone through a modernization program to be used but they were hardly new.
Their time has finally come. Replacement is underway with “new” stock based on retired District Line trains from London. See a pattern developing here. The system is shut down for a while for some significant track upgrades which will allow for a more frequent service. The track desperately needed work and the old trains were falling apart so, hopefully, this will provide a big improvement.
When I lived on the Island, I didn’t think much about the stuff that was there. All of these pictures I have taken when visiting more recently. This is all I have to record the new extinct Island Line stock. Two examples will be preserved if you want to go and see them!
The cable cars are a staple of the San Francisco tourist scene. I still grab the occasional shot of them, even having seen them more times than I can recall. As we were walking back one evening after a fun night out with friends, we crossed the street at Union Square as one was heading up Powell. I figured an evening shot was worth the effort.
During our visit to San Francisco, some friends told us to check out Salesforce Park. This is a park that has been built on top of the transit center in the heart of the city. The transit center is, by demand, a large area so the space on top of it makes for a decent area. The park was fun to wander around. It is surrounded by some interesting buildings which will warrant their own posts in due course.
There are seating areas, children’s play areas, an amphitheater, a dome over an atrium for the transit center itself and plenty of plants. The plant beds are broken down into categories covering different types and plants and different origins for the plants. There are sculptures around the park including one that is a series of water jets. These are triggered by sensors in the transit center such that, as a bus drives beneath them, they squirt up. A bus driving the length of the lane beneath has a sequence of jets that will ripple along the sculpture. We were there when one bus passed beneath and, having been hoping for some action (aside from the occasional random jet of water), we were almost caught out when the wave of jets came by.
If we hadn’t been told about the park, I would never have known. Even when we got to the entrance area, it was a little inconspicuous. It is worth a visit if you are passing by. There is also a more interesting entrance than the elevators but that will have to wait for another post.
Nagoya is home to a museum of Japanese rolling stock. The museum name focuses on Maglev technology and there is a Maglev prototype in the museum. However, the exhibits are really a cross section of the Japanese rail industry over the years. I will probably post some more from the museum as there were quite a few interesting exhibits. Most of it was inside – most welcome on such a hot day – but the N700 prototype was outside. I did have a look at that briefly along with an old steam locomotive but I was soon driven back inside by the temperatures.
When I first got there, you are directed into a hall with three significant exhibits. It was so dark, I was wondering whether there would be any decent photo opportunities. However, this was just the initial introduction and there were periodic videos and light shows to allow you to see these exhibits more clearly. A little patience was required. The main hall had the majority of the exhibits and they were lit normally. There were plenty of people in the museum taking pictures with small children that didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as the parents would have liked! Maybe they wanted to be at Legoland across the street?
There are a few readers of the blog that like trains so this is a quick view of some UK passenger trains. We stayed in Chichester for a while and were very close to the station. We had to walk past it in to the town. There were tons of trains running along this coast route so I saw several as we were finding out where things were. Here are two of the trains. They are both EMUs, one of which is relatively recent while the other is a pretty old vintage of train that I didn’t even realize operated in this part of the world.
