BNSF Exploring Electrification

http://www.railwayage.com/content/view/931/121/

Great Railway Age article about BNSF exploring the idea of electrifying some of its mainlines, by getting power from utility companies who want to use the railroad right-of-way for building out their services. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Let's get EMD GE to build an homage to the Little Joe and unleash them in Eastern WA!

Photo - UP Georgetown Lo-Fidelity

Ever heard of a Holga? I hadn't until about two years ago, when the world of Lomography was introduced to me merely by chance when searching for something on Amazon.com. Since I don't want to duplicate posts, read my personal blog if you want to know more about Holgas:

http://www.clarkblog.net/2009/06/foo-photo-my-first-holga-roll.html

Anyway, the above photo was one from the first roll of film I shot with a Holga. After he viewed the resulting slide show, one of the comments I got from a high school friend was:

"I liked the slide show, all very cool pics, the train pics almost look depression era, except the locomotive is a bit too new."

If the Holga does anything well, it's paying homage to The Depression! It's a great camera to release yourself from the world of editing your shots and placing you smack dab in the world of just taking pictures. What freedom!

Video - Train Report for School Project

My son was able to do a video report about trains for his class, and this is the result. He picked the media, took a lot of the photos and footage, and even chose the song used for the soundtrack. I edited, but tried to keep his voice primary in the video. You won't find much data accuracy here; David explains switcher movements in the rail yard as "fooling around." It's cool that he has a desire to explain what he sees in terms he understands. What you will discover by watching this is that an elementary schooler knows more about things like Balmer Yard and Amtrak Cascades than a lot of other kids his age!

Bottom line: starting kids early on trains can give them a reason to explore other things like video editing or photography, two areas that my son has already expressed interest in. If you don't see the embedded video below, click HERE to watch it directly on YouTube!