Johann Marsbar

Friday 22nd was the last full day of the trip and most of the morning was spent in SF -particularly on the Muni Metro system, though I discovered that the line I really wanted to photograph is currently shut for trackwork!

A pair of the newer Siemens cars on the M Line........

Cameron Beach depot was doing a very good impersonation of a Museum....

L-R ,  LA liveried PCC, Milan Peter Witt, Original  SF car of 1914, Red Arrow liveried SF PCC, a  Melbourne car and a SF PCC car.

A few different liveries were out on the F as well..............Pacific Electric......

Toronto......

and Illinois Terminal.......

I then headed off to the Salesforce Transit Centre, where this Alexander/Dennis DD was on a Westcat service......

...but I caught a Golden Gate Transit bus over the bridge to San Rafael where I wanted to visit a couple of Breweries, returning to SF from there via SMART and the Ferry.

San Rafael......

Larkspur - the southern end of the line......

I'd got an early evening flight back on the Saturday, so spent the morning in SF, where I discovered that the F line was shut along Market St and they were only operating from Steuart St to Fishermans Wharf, which meant using the loop at Steuart St - a "rare" bit of track, which gave some different photo opportunities......

St Louis livery.....

Washington DC......

Rather than put up with the bus back to the Airport, I decided to catch Caltrain to Millbrae for a "last run", and a bus from there, which at least enabled a slightly better photo to be taken of the Caltrain liveried AEM7..........

As I left, I spotted an F40 coupled to an MP15 which were making up a long train of withdrawn stock and on arrival at Millbrae the place was crawling with photographers!   

Unfortunately they had single line working in force, but I managed a shot of the tran as it followed the service I was travelling on.......

That concludes the selected images from that trip, though the thread will burst into life again later in the year, as I've got two other trips booked - one of which is somewhere I've never been before.......

9 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Oh I do like the oh so appropriate locos shown on the signs.

 

 

For something a bit different on that front, this is the pub sign for "The Station" which is outside Wivenhoe station on the GE.....

From the stock, I'm assuming it's Underground inspired but they seem to have forgotten the contact rails !

The pub was shut that day (end of scheduled 321 operation last year) so haven't a clue what it's like.......

Early August 2006 saw a visit made to a City I'd never been to before - Vienna - though the weather experienced during the trip was more like late October than August and it rained every day, from memory......

We flew out from Stansted on a late morning flight with Air Berlin on a fairly new 737-700 and after first heading into the City and checking into our hotel we purchased 72-hour Central Zone tickets and headed out for a look at Wien Südbahnhof station - with at that stage two seperate sets of platforms and nothing like the new station that you will find there today.....

By that stage the light was deteriorating badly so we gave up and headed off to visit a Brewery for the evening!

The following day was a bit brighter so we headed off after breakfast to start exploring the large tram network.  The tram fleet had started to receive examples of the ULF (Ultra Low Floor) type.....

....though most of the fleet was still high-floor, with the majority being from the E1 class (in the foreground below), with others of the later E2 class (in the background).......

We then headed out to Philadelphiabrücke to get some photographs of the Wiener Lokalbahn Interurban cars......

The name Philadelphiabrücke originates from the first loco used on the initial segment of the Südbahn which opened in 1838 - a Norris product - and some tiled artwork commemorating this is present on a building in the area....

On 15/03/2024 at 17:50, Bernard Lamb said:

Destroying anything at the time was a very low priority.  In the context of foreign layouts being attractive to UK audiences then yes.

This discussion started on the UK punters' lack of interest in the railways of other countries. Foreign locations with Uk stock must surely be a help in getting folk to stop and take a look.

The Dean goods must be the best known example of left behind motive power. It ended up in Vienna, via goodness knows where. The German crews loved it. One ex LMS set of coaches got as far as Hamburg. 

Bernard

This obviously got to Austria - and is now preserved there.......

Mountain View is an interchange between Caltrain....

VTA Buses.....

...and the VTA Light Rail......

I then headed to Menlo Park station for a bit more photography.....

...before heading off to Sunnyvale to visit this establishment........

Long Haul was actually the name of their Hefewiezen (5.3%) which was one of the nicest tasting Wheat Beers that I've had in years.  It was very noticeable that several of the brewpubs which used to be located along the Caltrain line have shut since Covid - paricularly one in Burlingame (Steelhead Brewing) - which I visited a number of times on the previous 2 trips to the area.

I then headed back into SF and took a ride on the F Line out to Castro, this shot of one of the Los Angeles liveried cars being taken on Market Street from the Illinois Terminal liveried car.....

The Chicago one was out that day as well......

.......before I finished up for a final session on Caltrain, 918 being seen at Millbrae after what I thought would be my last ride on the diesel service (but it wasn't....)

Whilst my 3-day ticket was valid out as far as Sunnyvale, it is possible to puchase a "zone upgrade" ticket from machines which, as long as you have a valid ticket for travel, enables you to travel beyond that zone at a rate of $2.50 per zone.  On the Thursday morning I did just that and travelled as far as Santa Clara to get some photos there.

Unfortunately the light was all wrong, so I only spent about an hour there, even if it was quite busy........

I'd originally intended to to get a bus into San Jose and, using the timed multi-transfer facility (2 hrs worth) on the Clipper Card (a Bay Area travel smartcard used by all operators on which you can load cash or season tickets), head back to Mountain View via the Light Rail which was in my Zone 3 ticket validity.  However,  as the Extra Zone ticket was valid for 3 hours (why that long?) and I was still heading in the same direction, I caught the next train to San Jose Diridon where there was a variety of stock parked up, including one of the new Caltran EMU's.....

SJ is a huge multi-platformed station now, with each platform seemingly long enough to take 2 complete train sets at any one time.

I decided to get another "Extra Zone" ticket to travel back to Mountain View on the train in the end, but did wander off Diridon to take a few bus photos and the VTA light rail while I was there.....

As well as the rack railway there is also the cable worked Standseilbahn Stuttgart which opened in 1929 and serves a Forest cemetery.......

The two vehicles used on the cable tramway both have teak bodywork.

Another view of the rack tramway to Degerloch.......

There was some track renewal taking place at Stuttgart Hbf that Sunday and a couple of private operator locos (ESG) were involved with the works....

...whilst more regular DB locos  seen were......

Wwe also found gauge conversion works - involving the retention of the metre gauge trackage as well as laying a third rail for standard gauge - on a long street running section of the 15 route....

Single line working with temporary pointwork was in force whilst the work was underway.

Stuttgart will feature again in future posts as that Germanwings route was a hand one for getting to other parts of Germany - and north west Switzerland.....

After getting some food in SF, I then headed off to ride Caltrain during the evening peak - my zone 1-3 ticket being valid out as far as Sunnyvale - just short of the Santa Clara/San Jose conurbation.

Palo Alto station was fairly well lit for both rail and bus photography after dark.......

Next morning again saw some trips on Caltrain in the morning peak, this being taken at Redwood City.....

I can't say I've seen a bus anywhere before celebrating the end of Covid lockdowns either......

Back in San Francisco, the Boston liveried PCC had made an appearance.....

As it was a Wednesday, I headed off after lunch to pay a visit to Magnolia Brewing in Haight/Ashbury - the premises they are now based in being the former Drugstore Cafe - one of the prime Hippy hangouts in the area during the mid to late 1960's!    Magnolia Brewing is seen to the left of this photo.....

...and the reason for going on a Wednesday was that it was their Cask Ale day and when I was last there in 2019 they had 3 beers on handpump - which generally sold out that day as well.

However was actually turned out to be correct, as since Covid they no longer reguarly brew any cask conditioned ales, which was a shame, and I wasn't that excited about their craft offerings that I tried whilst there this time either.

The evening peak on Caltrain was getting near, so I headed back into SF and did some more riding, again out as far as Palo Alto.....

...and also Redwood City.....

Until I was looking through my image files this particular weekend trip in July 2006 was one I'd completely forgotten about....

Another of the low-cost airlines active from Stansted at that time was Germanwings who flew to three or four destinations in Germany - one of them being Stuttgart. With the impending demise of the remaining metre gauge tram route (the 15) in Stuttgart, a Sat/Sun trip was undertaken in mid-July to ride and photograph the route, plus visit the Esslingen trolleybus system. The Route 15 wouldn't actually be shut for conversion until December 2007 and, as you will see later in this series, I did go there for the last weekend in the end.....

A Class 110 is seen at Stuttgart Hbf on our way out to Esslingen on the train.....

Esslingen trolleybuses ran on 2 different routes at that time using these Van Hool bodied vehicles....

I'd found a hotel at Zuffenhausen which was only a few minutes walk from the 15, the route using these distinctive GT4 trams.......

There was also a charter out that day using this car from 1938.......

Little did I know when I took this photo that I'd end up riding on that particular car 15 months later in the closing day ceremony/parade!

The rest of the system by that stage had been converted to standard gauge Stadtbahn standards, though dual gauge trackage remained in some places......

There is also Route 10 which is a rack worked line, a seperate bicycle trailer being provided....

The DB services to Zuffenhausen were still being worked by 420's at that time......

They are currently erecting a new fence around the site on the Blue Island cam and if they put a sign between the two tall gatepost poles, that will completely mess up the view of all the bridges from the camera!

Could be fun.....

I'm sure it was the same as all the others I've "subscribed" to and I certainly didn't have to enter an e-mail address anywhere.

There was a large black button over to the left just under the feed image and I just clicked on that. it then asks how you want to receive notifications - if at all - and that was all I had to do.....

Just down the hill from the Route 49 trolleybus terminus at Beach St and close to the waterfront you will come across this abandoned trackage and a tunnel entrance.....

When it was functioning as a port area, the Embarcadero had rail lines and sidings along its full length and this tunnel lead into Fort Mason which was a US Army port facility and is now designated as a National Park.  Most of the buildings now have other uses but some of the rail lines serving them still remain in place.......

The other end of the tunnel is seen here.....

I was originally then planning to head off via BART and a bus connection for an afternoon in Martinez train watching, but decided to head off to Oakland again instead, as all the passesnger traffic would come through there as well and there was no guarantee of any freight activity at Martinez either.

AC Transit in Oakland had introduced their own BRT scheme since I was last there.......

...whilst a shift to other forms of power was also evident.....

Their fleet of double-deckers seemed to avoid me, yet again, despite seeing a depot full of them from the train when I went to the airshow on the Saturday!

As I approached Jack London Square, I managed to miss the front end of a southbound Intermodal by a couple of minutes, though it then held me up by blocking the street for at least another 5 mins, though luckilly it had cleared by the time this appeared from the north......

There were then two more passenger trains in quick succession......

...before I wandered off to Oakland United Beerworks - only to find it shut!    

Plan B then came into force and I visited Original Pattern Brewing instead, before returning to JLS and spotting that the points were set for the station avoiding line and an amber signal was shown northbound.  After a few minutes, this manifest appeared running very slowly.......

Luckilly I was standing on that side of the street as otherwise I would have missed my ferry to SF as it then blocked the street for about 15 mins due to its slow speed!

A view from the ferry of (part of) the Port of Oakland......

Been a pair of IC liveried locos through Blue Island today......

Can't be too many of those left now...

From the cable cars I headed off to do other things for the rest of the day.  One of the new Siemens S200 Muni Metrocars is seen at Church/Market with a New Flyer trolleybus behind....

The older Breda built cars are now slowly being replaced by the Siemens cars and they mainly seemed to be being used on the J Line at the moment, though this one is actually on the N......

One of the routes (L Line) is closed for rebuilding at the moment which is annoying as it was one I wanted to get some photos on.

A New Flyer trolleybus is seen on Route 24 on Divisadero.....

That evening, I caught the 292 bus back to the hotel from downtown SF.  The terminus has been moved to a different location since I was last there, the buses waiting in Drumm St....

Considering it was down to a 30min frequency by that time, I was surprised to see how much layover time the buses had at the terminus, with 3 buses sitting there and only the 292 running by that time of the day!

Caltrain had a special 3-day ticket on offer whilst I was there with 3 zones worth of travel for $39.50 instead of the usual $49.50 but their machines were only configured to start the ticket at the zone the machine was located in. MIllbrae was in Zone 2 and I wanted a 1-3 Zone ticket, so the following morning I had to get the bus again and get off in South San Francisco (a totally different town to San Francisco) which was in Zone 1 so I could buy the ticket I wanted before heading out for a couple of hours riding on Caltrain.

A northbound service is seen leaving Redwood City.......

Caltrain bought a pair of redundant Amtrak AEM7 electrics a few years back, supposedly to use them for testing the new overhead wires, but I'm not aware of them ever being used for such a purpose. Both of them are now parked up at 4th/King terminal station in SF so I was able to get a poor photo through the train window......

On arrival in SF, I made my way to the California St cable car and rode it out to its terminus at Van Ness......

Since my last visit in 2019, the section of Van Ness north of Market St has been converted to a Bus Rapid Transit corridor with bus lanes in the centre of the carriageways and loading platforms/shelters at each stop.  The BRT corridor is used by both MUNI and Golden Gate Transit and actually seems to have priority at most road junctions, which is somewhat lacking everywhere else in the City. Travel on Public Transit elsewhere in SF is painfully slow - particularly in the central area.

I actually only used 6 days of the 7 day rover as I had a late evening flight back to Stansted on the 6th day of the holiday, so I had to limit my travels accordingly.

I headed first for Kedzierzyn Kozle where this further variation of the then new Railbus types was seen.....

From there I was heading via an unelectrified line to Klodzko and thankfully, rather than one of those railbuses, the train was a 3-coach loco hauled service behind SU45-011......

En route we passed through Kamieniec Zabkowicki which seemed to be the home of a number of stored/dumped diesel locos, including some SP 32's......

...and judging by the faded paintwork, some had been sitting there a while........

Having visited Klodzko in 1985 when it was almost 100% steam worked, the place had changed that much I had difficulty in visualising where my 1985 photos were taken as the steam depot was derelict and the yard had been reduced in size.  This SM42 was sitting in what was left of the yard...........

....but the station itself was still as decrepit - most probably the last time that canopy saw some paint was pre-1945! 

My train back to Wroclaw was the statutory EN57.......

The remains of the loco shed can just be made out in the distance of that shot.

I had most of the afternoon free in Wroclaw to cover some more of the tram routes.....

I did have a look at Borek tram depot, the car shed obviously surviving Festung Breslau, despite being in the southern part of the City where everything else had mainly been demolished post war......

Of interest was this line up of original German cars - latterly used as works cars - stored at the side of the building.  A considerable number of these pre-1945 cars have survived and some of them have slowly been restored as part of the historic tram fleet.  More semi-derelict examples will feature in a future posting on this thread.

That concluded the last full holiday I had in Poland until 2014 but a number Polish photos will feature on trips to Germany during the years 2007-2013 as that Country was to become the most regular destination for travel in those years - though not exclusively....

I believe Felixstowe docks did actually use this crane for unloading containers in the early days.....

.....which was the original RAF one for lifting flying boats out of the water!

I can just about remember that crane being in situ until the mid 1960's.

This was the QNS&L loco earlier on.....

11 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I'm now on a different PC and still no luck

 

The menu page doesn't show Illinois as a state with a camera, do you get the same screen?

It's not shown on their list or anywhere on YT because it doesn't go "Public" for another fortnight.    However, as I subscribed to their channel (for free) when the Blue Island feed was originally on, plus I bookmarked the link to it, it's letting me access the camera OK. That could explain why the number of viewers hasn't gone above 20 on there for most of the day!

8 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I've tried several times today, including just now and it was off.

Odd, I've left it on for most of the day while I was doing some decorating and it's been streaming OK all of that time.  There was a Quebec, North Shore & Labrador loco that passed through about 30 mins before that OCS as well.  Only just switched it off.....

EDIT - One of the Moderators did post a message on there saying that it won't be going "public" for another fortnight, so it may only be available to people who subscribed to the channel when it was on before.....

.

Not quite sure what this was on the Blue Island cam just now.....

The first car was lettered Southern Pacific though the end one appeared to be a CSX observation car of some sort.

On the Monday morning I caught the Samtrans service 292 bus from the Hotel towards San Francisco, alighting when it passed the Route T MUNI Metro tram terminus at Sunnydale.  The Clipper Card reader wasn't working on the bus so the driver just waved me on board, and the same applied on my way back to Millbrae (on a different bus) that evening!

Since I was last in SF, the T has been extended, mainly underground, to a deep level terminus in Chinatown, the station building being seento the left of this photo on Stockton St.....

I believe the plan is to eventually continue the tunnels as far as Fishermans Wharf and/or the Presidio, though no construction work has been started on that as yet.

The first part of the morning was spent in that area, mainly photographing the cable cars, though this shot of a trolleybus on Route 1 illustrates why that mode is popular in SF.....

The California St cable car line is the least used of the 3 services and it's easier to get onboard as it is generally free of tourists. When I was there in 2016, I had a car to myself one morning for the whole return trip!

On the other two lines, it pays to travel early in the day, as they get fairly wedged most of the rest of the time.......

This one was coming out of the Depot for service whilst I was in the area.......

As the Sunday had been St Patricks day, they were running a "decorated" car over that weekend and I was surprised to see it still out on the Monday.....

Thankfully I missed the parade as I was at the airshow that day! 

There were enough people dressed in green on pub crawls in Oakland on the Sunday, so I dread to think what it was like on SF parade day....

Discovered this morning that the Blue Island camera is back working again, though they say there may still be some power outages depending on the ongoing work at the site.

A bit of a photo heavy post today as we continue with the second part of the day in Poznan....

There is quite a long ( just under 4 km ) 600mm gauge "Park Railway" in Poznan and whilst I didn't ride on it, I did have a look at what was running on the day I was there.......

This Tx26 loco was plinthed by the station......

Further information can be found here....   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Railway_Maltanka 

The fact the line is run by MPK explains the sighting of this "mystery" railcar at Staroleka tram depot later that day......

...as that is actually normally based on the Park line and appears in the fleet list on the Wiki page - the railcar dating from 1932 and being much more interesting than those Wls 40/50 diesels!

Close to Poznan Glowny was a large tram depot that had an interesting selection of works cars and also seemed to house the preserved tram fleet, though I could only see some of the items that were kept there......

Even one of the former German Duewag cars had been converted to a works car.....

I was still taking a few slides, though in rapidly diminishing numbers by this stage, and these scans show another works car plus their preserved N Class tram+trailer set......

As well as secondhand stock from Germany, MPK had also purchased a number of trams from Amsterdam in the 1990's and there were still about a dozen of these in use in 2006.....

As well as the tram riding, I did have a look around the City Centre whilst I was there and on passing the Tourist Office I noticed a book in the window on the subject of Poznan tramways so went inside to investigate. Entitled Tramwaje w Poznaniu it had been published in 2005 and - apart from obviously being totally in the Polish language - it's profusely illustrated in both colour & b/w photos with fleetlists and what is a comprehensive history of the tram system - and the price was about the equivalent of £6, from memory, for 270 pages worth of hardback book!

Needless to say, I bought one and it certainly knocks spots off some of the equivalent publications on tram/bus operations that get published here - particularly nowadays.

I was hoping that there might have been some mention of the Poznan trolleybus system in it (which there isn't), which operated from 1930 to 1970, and which was the first trolleybus operation in Poland when it opened in February 1930.

The reason for my interest in the trolleybuses is that the first 3 vehicles used were actually built here in Ipswich by Ransomes, Sims & Jefferies.......

There were two 6-wheelers numbered 401/402, as seen on the left in the catalogue page shown above, together with a much smaller 4-wheeler numbered 400 which had a bit more of an interesting history.  400 was actually built in 1925 as a right hand drive vehicle and was registered DX 5409, becoming trolleybus No.6 in the Ipswich Corporation Tramways fleet and entering service in December 1925!  It saw service in Ipswich until April 1926, after which it was returned to Ransomes and after conversion to left hand drive and repositioned passenger saloon doors, plus the fitting of pneumatic tyres, it ended up being sold to Poznan as their first trolleybus.

A bit more information on the Poznan system can be found here....   https://kultura.poznan.pl/mim/kultura/en/news/culture,c,101/trolleybuses-at-turning-points-of-history,146263.html

I had a further photo session on the way back to the station......

...and whilst waiting for my train back to Wroclaw, another of the recently introduced railcar types put in an appearance......

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

Wow. 

 

I didnt realise how old those Combinos were. 

 

Still some Konstals running about but haven't  noticed any of the ex German fleet of late, except the Kit Kat special that ran over Christmas. 

 

The tram network has seen a lot of work over last few years.  The depot on Zeylander has closed and a new fast route through what used to be the carriage sidings at Poznan Glowny has opened. 

 

You can now buy and load a prepaid card rather than use paper tickets,  although these are still available 

 

 Works like an oyster card, touch in, touch out, but unlike Oyster several people (IIRC up to 99)  can travel on one card. 

 

One of our favourite activities if we had an afternoon to kill was to buy 24 hour ticket and get on and off random trams and watch the city go by.  

 

 

Andy

Last time I was in Poznan was on a day trip on the train from Berlin back in 2014 and the day tickets were still paper back then.  They were running one car around in Dusseldorf (Rheinbahn) livery at that time, though the Frankfurt liveried one seemed to have vanished ......unless it was hiding away in a Depot somewhere......

Krakow kept a couple of cars in their original liveries (Vienna & Nurnberg), so that seems to be a Polish "thing" for some tram operators.  Poznan seems to have a fairly active preserved fleet as well (according to a book I bought on that 2006 visit, which I'll mention in the post tomorrow) including a horse tram and a wartime KSW car, so that could be why a couple of original liveries were kept on the German cars.

As an aside, for those who used to follow my "North American" photo thread up to early last year and hadn't spotted it, that thread has now burst into life again after a trip there last month...

Like this one, it's not all trains, but railed transport of one form or another does predominate.  Once the current San Francisco section has finished, there will be at least two other trips this year to report on as I'm playing catch-up after not going there (or having any form of holiday abroad) for 4.5 years!