Steamtown in March

It's great to be paid to go on a railfanning fieldtrip to Steamtown USA. Hadn't been there in about 2 years so nice to be back. Due to a derailment, see below we had to go in the long way, through the yard (horrible I say, just horrible ;-) ). Unfortunately, didn't have the camera handy for cleaner shots of the derailment, and by the time we left it had been moved... Did have some time to myself though and had a blast going through the yard...

Delaware Lackawanna #2461, an ALCO C425

Delaware Lackawanna (DL) #2461, an ALCO C425, DL 405, an ALCO C420, and DL 4252, another ALCO C425.

Delaware Lackawanna (DL) #2423, an ALCO C425. In the background derailed DL #3642, an ALCO C636, then DL 211, a RS-32, and finally DL 3000 (a Montreal Locomotive Works/ALCO M630)

A really cool yard switcher moving a Lackawanna coach into the shop. See the video below to watch it move...

A new tender being made for Canadian National Pacific #3254 that runs at Steamtown

A very sad Shay

Front end of a Boston and Maine tender showing the automatic stoker that made the fireman's job much easier...

 Parts is parts...

Watching Trains in Real-time

Watch trains moving across the country in real time with the Süddeutsche Zeitung's Zugmonitor, a webcam of a different kind. Site is designed to show where there are delays, but entertaining none-the-less.

To stop the video and track in real time, click on "LIVE" in the upper right.What this shows: each black arrow is a long distance train en-route. Clicking on it shows the route and on the right a window opens displaying the stations. The arrows surrounded by colored circles are trains that are late. The darker the circle, the later it is. Clicking on one of those also gives the reason for delay at top of the window. Using the (Suche) window, you can also choose the type of trains you want displayed and also select stations.

Site in German only... Click image to start watching.

S-Bahn

You never know who you'll meet on the train... Animation by Markus Neidel.

Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis [1927]

Wonderful railway and urban footage in this 1927 silent film directed by Walter Ruttmann, co-written by Carl Mayer and Karl Freund. The film is an example of the city symphony film genre.^[1] A musical score for an orchestra to accompany the silent film was written by Edmund Meisel. As a "city symphony" film, it portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city's daily life.

In 2007, a restored version of the film was shown with the fully reconstructed original score by Edmund Meisel. The film was restored by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in cooperation with ARTE and with funding by the ZDF. The restored version is based on cellulose nitrate copy from the archives of the former Reichsfilmarchivs which was augmented by footage acquired from the Library of Congress.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin:_Symphony_of_a_Metropolis