Union Pacific Engine – Ogden, Utah
Burned Out Box Car – Ogden, Utah 1
Burned Out Box Car – Ogden, Utah 2
Cargill Engine – Ogden, Utah
Rail Abstraction – Ogden, Utah
Rail Car – Ogden Utah
Red Cross Hospital Car – Ogden, Utah
Train Snow Plow – Ogden, Utah
Train Engine – Ogden, Utah
Union Pacific Box Car – Ogden, Utah
A Sunday – day’s end; we had enjoyed family’s camaraderie and been among cousins at our cousins farm, an hour away from our Edmonton home. On what is now known as the Queen Elizabeth II highway between Calgary and Edmonton we traveled home Dad at the wheel of our green 69 Pontiac Parisienne. Often on our right travelling northward with us would be a train – three or four engines together pulling a string of cars, box cars, black tankers, different hopper cars etc.. As we finally entered the city of Edmonton and made our right turn from Calgary trail onto 51st avenue at the intersection holding Koch Mercury and the Van Winkle hotel, we would encounter the train we had traveled with at the rail crossing behind Koch Mercury. And, as you sat in your car waiting for the train to pass you could sometimes signal the engineer to sound the train’s horn by putting your fist in the air and pulling down in same fashion that the engineer would with his hand on the cable line that would release the bellow of the train’s horn. More often than not, the train’s engineer would oblige, the horn would release and the sound could be heard for miles.
It’s been a generation or two since Dad and Mom took my two brothers and I to my cousin’s farm. I have had my own time working with trains during summers in University, often as rail car spotter. My own son is now entering his fourth year of University and there’s even been a good long while since he and I would read of Sir Topham Hat, Gordon, Percy, Thomas et al in Reverend W. Awdry’s ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ books.
And, my own interest in trains has not waned. The following photos are a number of first edits from Ogden and engines for viewing at the the Union Pacific railway station, there.
Listening to: ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone’) and ‘Every Breaking Wave’ from U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ – flip, you don’t have to buy the album, it’s free in iTunes; also the morning has been about Springsteen’s music and musicares celebration of his achievement.
Quote to Inspire – “… Photographs are evidence of not only what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
Recommended book encouraging literacy in children – ‘The Read Aloud Handbook,’ by Jim Trelease
