Another small update from my subway stations that I had started but not quite finished series. This section finally contains the photos I took that illustrate the summery I’ve written of the Myrtle Avenue-Broadway Station, as well as summaries and photos (or additional photos) for the two other Myrtle Avenue el stations, Central and Knickerbocker Avenue on the M (probably soon to be replaced by the V). Here the three updated stations:

	Myrtle Avenue-Broadway (29 station photos added, and a section for 16 photos of artwork)
	Central Avenue (24 photos and a summery added)
	Knickerbocker Avenue (a genuine page with 26 phtos)

Enjoy! Next will probably be finishing the M’s branch so the Eastern Division is finally done completely fully!

In this update, that I’ve been working on in my spare time I present updates to the Jamiaca Avenue El (J/Z) Stations that had much more skeletal pages before. Interestingly enough quite a few of these stations have multiple exits.
Here the four updated stations:

	121 Street (28 photos added)
	111 Street (12 new photos)
	104 Street (7 new photos)
	Woodhaven Blvd (18 new photos)

Enjoy!

Well over this past weekend I went for a couple of walks and took some more photos documenting railway services in Colorado Springs. The first walk, that was actually for an event for class took me across the Colorado Avenue bridge, just south of the no longer in passenger use Colorado Springs Railroad Station, these photos were taken from that bridge (it crosses over the railroad tracks before continuing and crossing over I-25):

I then had to continue down to a small area of converted into unusual industries (we were there to visit a bike co-op), I stopped at a store called the Liberty Store, part store, part silkscreening operation, on the other side of the tracks, that’s in the no mans land between I-25 and the railroad tracks and station. Amazingly enough there’s no fence between the gravel parking lots of these low-commercial areas, that boarder the tracks and that are across from the station:

On sunday I was going for another walk also with my camera and was finally in the right place at the right time to photograph one of the numerous freight train that travel on the busy rail line along the front range. This was a fairly short train (maybe 40 cars) of raw materials, think box cars and tanker cars. It’s motive power was three BNSF Dash 9-44CW Locomotives #5358 was the leader, with helpers #4615, #4568:

That’s all folks, one of these days I’ll make a genuine section of the website for the photos of freight trains I’ve taken over the years (it currently just contains a small set of photos of the short-line Housatonic Railroad in Connecticut). They will definitely never be the primary focus of this website though.

Well, over the past couple of days, I was going through my archive adding photos that I really should have added a long time ago, since the pages are already built. In this upload I’ve added quite additional content to the Downtown Minneapolis Light Rail Stations from a visit to that city on my roadtrip back from Colorado in May 2009.
Here are the stations with additions:

	Target Field (18 photos of the station still under construction)
	Warehouse District (12 photos added)
	Nicollet Mall (10 photos added)
	Government Plaza (7 photos added)
	Downtown East-Metrodome (4 photos added)
	46th Street (1 photo added)

Enjoy!

Hi all, this is a bit of a hybrid posting, showing some photos, as I enjoyed my last day of my three day January weekend, before I go back to the hectic life of college student tomorrow (yes, even though its MLK day, other than thanksgiving at my college holidays aren’t observed). Anyway today I decided to go for a walk with my camera and see if I could photograph anything transit related (bus trains, the like). I began by walking down the bike path that fallows Monument Creek and runs right near the major North/South Railway Line that goes through Colorado Springs connecting Denver with Texas and other points south, its a quite busy multi-tracked line, with freight trains keeping it busy (coal trains are extremely common).
This was the first sighting I encountered, as I left the bike path approaching where the former Colorado Springs train station is:

It’s Union Pacific (still painted in a Southern Pacific Livery) EMD GP-40-2 #4182 coupled to a rare caboose Rio Grande #01513, most freight trains don’t have cabooses anymore but this ones apparently still assigned for Colorado Springs Local Service, notice Pikes Peak in the Background. Source

Next I went across the street to Antlers Park to photograph this steam engine now fenced around and on display:

Across the street from this is the large building that was formerly the Denver & Rio Grande Depot-Colorado Springs Railroad Stations and is now a restaurant:

Now the depressing part of my walk downtown, I walked by a bus stop, photographing the bus schedules that went into effect at the beginning of the year:

Notice something wrong with the three bus schedules posted, there’s no more Sunday service. I then walked over to the now completely deserted (before 2010 bus service on Sunday was about hourly) on sundays (and even worse Saturdays, and weeknights after 6:15pm as well), Downtown Bus Terminal, This is where most of the COS buses plus, at half-hour intervals (still, not hourly for most routes) during the week:

There’s the downtown bus terminal with its small indoor waiting area, completely deserted, for some reason though the lights in the bus terminal have been kept on over the weekend even though there is no bus service.

Wow, third update of the day (one though was after midnight, hence it’s date as today, I think that’s a first!

Well today I was uploading some photos finally that I took two weeks ago of the Sutphin Blvd Subway station including the connection to Airtrain as I was going to JFK to fly back to Denver (where I ended up taking the SkyRide to FREX) to get back to Colorado Springs and my home at Colorado College. Anyway I decided I would upload those photos and as I was doing it I realized that I had never typed a summery of that station so now ones finally been added. After I was filing (figuratively, in Aperture) away those photos with the rest taken of the station. I than realized that I had typed a detailed summery of the next stop Jamaica Center this summer but had never uploaded the extensive photo essay I had taken, so I’ve done that as well.

Here the two updated stations:

	Sutphin Blvd-Archer Avenue (9 additional photos)
	Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer (36 additional photos of the station and 4 of artwork)

Well, in keeping with my current project on the Canadian section of the website, I finally made a homepage for my new subsite, Canada.SubwayNut.com:

That is all

As the caption up top says North America’s first modern light rail went to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, a city system I had the pleasure of visiting and fully photographing the small LRT in last May in the middle of rather circuitous 2 week road trip back from Colorado Springs. Anyway this fairly small but heavily used light rail line in the quite cold and relatively rich Canadian province of Alberta opened in 1978 (only five out of the 13 stations were never a LRT terminal station), also pioneered the POP payment system. The system is definitely is much closer to a heavy rail (witch can’t have grade crossings) line than most. Trains run underground through Downtown Alberta and beneath the University. The northern elevated portion of the line fallows a freight ROW with only a spattering of grade crossings. Each station has it’s own under or overpass area where passengers enter and exit the station, with the platforms within the POP zone. The line has high platforms and LRVs to match. Only the newest (opening in stages in the past two years) section feels like a conventional light rail with the train line running at a grade alongside larger city streets and these are the only light rail stations that require passengers to cross tracks to access the station platforms (interestingly, their all island platforms). Originally it used conventional fare control means with turnstiles at each station, but having to staff every entrance (all downtown stations have two, one at either end of the platform) proved extremely expensive and the line almost immediately converted to the Proof-of-Payment system that all modern American Light Rail systems (built after this time) have adopted. At all stations except the three newest (where the platforms don’t even require POP since the TVMs are directly on them), it would be extremely easy to re introduce a barrier fare collection system.

Anyway enough of how interesting I found America’s first light rail, Here’s the link to the system, and its 13 Stations with over 271 photos total (each station is worth a visit they all have lots of content):

Enjoy! Also, these pages I’ve created a hybrid format so now only photos where captions are really relevant (and that aren’t explained in the station’s summery text) will have captions while others wont with pages looking quite decent. Calgary should be next, and more importantly a genuine homepage for Canada.SubwayNut.com, a seperate sub-site for my Canadian coverage

This update is of Ottawa’s simple, starter and small, DMU light rail system that uses Bombardier Talent BR643 DMU diesel-powered vehicles, that are the same as those use by Deutsche Bahn, although the onboard restroom has been decommissioned. Evidence of the cars German’s origins are still evident in some subtle signage such as text on the emergency equipment. The rail line and it’s five stations still use a barely active freight rail line, that’s entirely single tracked except at Carleton, the lines middle station where the 2 DMUs that are running in service pass one another.
Here’s the 5 new stations:

	Bayview (15 photos)
	Carling (11 photos)
	Carleton (18 photos)
	Confederation (7 photos)
	Greenboro (7 photos)

Enjoy! and yes, once I get more of Canada finished I plan to make a more elaborate and informative homepage for this subsection of the website

When I was in Toronto a year and a half ago I tried to photograph a bit of the GO Transit Commuter Rail system, who the now ambiguous Bombardier Bi-Level commuter rail cars of North American Commuter Railroads were originally designed and built for. I really didn’t get to photograph very many VIA stations and even fewer trains, especially because 5 of the 7 lines only operate during peak direction rush hours (GO Transit operates an extended bus system with interlined ticketing to provide off-peak service).
Anyway, here are the six stations I photographed (two are shared with VIA Rail Canada’s Intercity Rail Services):

	Toronto’s Union Station (14 photos)
	Aldershot (13 photos)
	Burlington (6 photos)
	Kipling (6 photos)
	Kennedy (4 photos)
	Bloor (16 photos)

As a bit of an add-on to this website update, here’s the only VIA station I was able to photograph on my road trip last summer back from Colorado to New York that included going up to Calgary and Edmonton, (don’t worry I photographed both their light rail systems fully, they will probably be the next large website update, using the much more efficient to make caption-less webpages that I’ve used in Buenos Aires and Toronto So Far, I might though decide to try a hybrid system and only caption some images, such as vehicle types and #s, I’ll see, I haven’t decided yet, don’t worry I’m keeping the subway portion of the website in the same format as always, these photos need the date taken beneath them in the least, I might perhaps try the light-box system which would allow for the first time a slideshow view, although I would have to make my images smaller. Comments on this for how I should proceed with new webpages would be appreciated!

Well here’s that VIA Station:

Winnipeg, MB (11 photos)

Enjoy this update! The next couple weeks are a prime time for website updates for me, I got back to Colorado last weekend, and am currently taking a relatively easy optional J-term type half-block with plenty of free time to update this website, So check back for new updates often!