Tag Archives: transportation

Stored Ferries

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Bainbridge Island is the location of Eagle Harbor.  This is the maintenance base for the Washington State Ferries.  Look at it on Google Maps and you will see a ferry moored up in maintenance or long term storage.  However, since the onset of the pandemic, the ferries have been operating at a reduced schedule.  This has continued even though traffic levels during summer have increased markedly.  This reduced schedule means not all ferries are in service and a bunch are stored at Eagle Harbor.  Shooting in to the sun is not ideal but it was the only available shot.  Here are some of the ferries either in storage or awaiting a return to the full schedule.

Old British Locomotives

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In the process of scanning so many old negatives, I come across shots that I had no idea I had taken.  When I still shot film, I would not go nuts taking shots but I was certainly willing to take a shot of anything that I found interesting at the time.  Since I had no idea that I was going to have a career in rail, I didn’t think trains would be very important.  However, I am an engineer at heart and any big mechanical items catch my interest.  It isn’t surprising that I found a few photos of trains.  Some of my old colleagues will find these of interest.  Others may just like them because they like trains.  My sister will probably like the Class 50 just because she used to commute to work behind them for a number of years!

The Old Ferry is a Substitute

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On our trip to Tofino, we were on an older ferry from BC Ferries.  The Queen of New Vancouver was our ride in both directions.  I am not an expert on BC Ferries but this boat clearly looked a lot older than the majority of the fleet.  That’s because she is.  All of her sister ships have been scrapped but she was refitted around 2007 for another ten to fifteen years.  (Wikipedia is my friend.). I guess that means her days are numbered.  I am not sure whether she is used regularly but I did hear that another ship was in maintenance.  Maybe that is why she was in use.  Anyway, here is the old girl.  We rode on one of the newer ships a while later and they are definitely better equipped for the passengers.  Maybe she still has some time to go though.

Looking Back at the HSTs

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As a small boy, the new thing in British trains was the Intercity 125.  Known in the industry as the HST, this was a step forward in fast train travel for the UK.  When I started working in the rail industry many years later, the HSTs were a big part of our fleet.  They had been in service a long time by then but were still the backbone of certain corridors and were getting further investment.  Move on another 20 years and now the fleet is finally disappearing.

Some are still being reconfigured for a future on new routes, but the majority of the fleet is being replaced by a new generation of trains and it is a surprise just how long it has taken to find their successors.  The HSTs have been a solid fleet with strong performance, a level of redundancy and a ride quality that was impressive.  I figured I would through in a couple of shots I have of them.  I have very few, sadly.  One is an old one in British Rail colors from the 80s and the others are from the days of GNER.  What a shame I don’t have more.  Given the amount of time I spent traveling on them or inspecting them at depots and overhaul facilities, I should have tons.  Oh to have had had phones in our cameras then!

Heavy Lifter

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In a visit we made to Seattle in the mid 2000s, we took a boat tour around Elliott Bay.  One of the more impressive ships in the harbor was one that is designed to lift heavy loads and carry them long distances.  It will sink to allow the load to be floated on to the hull and then it will lift back up and leave the load on the deck.  You can see the markings for sinking the hull on the superstructure.

The most impressive view of the ship was from the front as we passed ahead of it.  The beam was something special to see.  It had a very muscular look to it.  These are the sort of ships that have been used to moved smaller ships when they have suffered damage.  The Royal Navy had a destroyer that hit a reef in the South Pacific once that was moved this way.  Quite an impressive capability.

Cruising Out Under Lion’s Gate Bridge

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Cruise ships are a regular feature of Vancouver Harbour.  Pacific Place has a terminal where two ships can be berthed at any one time.  One evening, as I was hanging out on Stanley Park, one of the ships set sail – presumably for a trip up to Alaska.  I watched it pass close by where I was and took a look at what I could see happening on the decks facing the shore (including one chap in a bathrobe on a rear balcony who probably didn’t think he was visible.  Then the ship headed out under the Lions Gate bridge as the sun was beginning to go down.

The Original Doctor Yellow

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The Tokaido Shinkansen service requires regular inspection of the track to ensure it is up to the high standards required of high speed service.  JRC operates an inspection train called Doctor Yellow.  It is a highly instrumented version of the current trains.  I have seen the current Doctor Yellow when I was at one of JRC’s maintenance facilities.  However, the original Doctor Yellow was based on the Series 0 trains.  It is now preserved in the SC Maglev museum in Nagoya along with many of the other Shinkansen designs.

Ferries and Freighters from Above

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Our aerial adventure with Kenmore Air included a lot of time over the waters of Puget Sound.  Very little time was spent over land.  The waters were not very busy but there was enough boat traffic to see as we soared overhead.  We weren’t always close, though, so sometimes things were watched from a distance.  We did have a pretty close pass on a freighter though.  It was making good speed heading into the sound.

Ferry traffic is a regular thing to see with the Washington State Ferries heading to and fro across the waters.  As we were closing in on Friday Harbor, we saw one ferry.  It was a smaller one that was running between the islands and it was a bit hard to get a good view of.  The ferries between Edmonds and Kingston are a lot more heavily used and so are a lot bigger.  They were passing each other mid crossing as we ran south so I managed to get a few shots of them from above as we headed overhead.

A Little Hovercraft Video

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I got a few stills of the hovercraft but I also decided to film some video.  For those that haven’t seen hovercraft in action, stills probably do not give a suitable impression of how they rise up above the surface yet still leave a wake.  Quite a cool form of transportation and I do enjoy seeing them.  Hope you enjoy the video.