Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: kodachrome

Being one of the first U.S. railroad stations built exclusively for electric trains (although not the first, as the second, and current, Grand Central Terminal, as well as C.U.T. both preceded it), 30th Street Station was nevertheless built to the grandiose standards of the steam era. This is the main concourse, still decorated for Christmas, on Boxing Day, 2000.

Here's a larger view of the large waiting room in which the statue insert in Pictures 2 and 3 was placed.

This was my first ever shot of an Amtrak Acela Express high speed tilt train, in this case trailed (notice the markers are lit) by power car (locomotive) #2031. We were over a half hour late, if I'm not mistaken, which was symptomatic of the larger problem of the Acela Express program being scandalously botched. Now, over six years after I took this, it's still a debacle of scandalously bad engineering, management, and substandard performance, and I think that anyone who follows Amtrak (with a clear, unbiased mind) will see the immense incompetence and probably corruption that went into creating this problem. It's also been a scandalous waste of money, not because Amtrak shouldn't get buckets of money right now, but because if the money is to be spent, it should produce quality results. When I took it from Philadelphia to NYP on this particular day, however, it was a fun ride, though. :-)

It's not my favorite station in the world, but surely no other station has quite the cred of Grand Central Terminal. It's probably the most famous station in the world, more so than even London King's Cross, London Paddington, Paris Gare de Austerlitz, or any other station that I can think of. Built gradually during the early 1900s to replace an earlier station, it was America's first new all-electric heavy railroad station, necessitated by New York's new (at that time) clean air legislation banning steam locomotives from Manhattan. It's still, unless I'm mistaken, the world's largest station, too, with 42 tracks, although if truth be told much of this capacity is redundant.

Arguably the most famous meeting place in the New York City (and one of the most famous in the world) is the kiosk in the center of the main concourse in Grand Central Terminal. Some people were gathered there on this day, but only a moderate number.

St. Pancras station, and the Midland Hotel which is incorporated into the front of the building, was arguably the most beautiful, spectacular commercial failure in the history of London when it was constructed in 1867. Overwhelmingly the most grandiose and beautiful of London's stations, it was redundant when (over)built, and a product of the rivalry between the various private companies vying for the London market during the mid-19th Century. The Midland Railway, the original owners, spent 2,000,000 pounds on its construction, enough so that the company never recoupped the loss, especially since someone made the blunder of building the hotel without modern plumbing!!! Although the station was built as a combination passenger and freight station, with the underground freight handling facilities specialising in overnight beer shipments, little of the station has ever been put into full use. This may have a happy ending, though, as since I took these photos the building has been undergoing a massive renovation to serve as a successor to Waterloo International once the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is built, with the old beer cellars being reused for dedicated international platforms and a car park.

Here's the fatter of St. Pancras's two towers. I love the arches on it!! :-)

Designed by Sir Christopher Wren to replace the original St. Paul's Cathedral destroyed in the Great London Fire of 1666, although that earlier St. Paul's, built in 1087-1314, had actually been the fourth cathedral to sit on this site and some historians believe that the site has Roman Pagan origins. There was a church built here at least as early as 604 AD, supposedly on an ancient Roman See. In any case, as a photo, this is one of my all-time favorites, and I hope you like it too. This illustrates what a good camera and even better film can do, giving the lie to the claim that the quality of camera doesn't matter. Of course, I like to think there was some skill involved too.... :-) That fuzz in the background is because, regrettably, Ritz ripped me off on the scanning. They even damaged the slide.

I like this shot of St. Paul's, too, and it was shot on the same night as Picture 1, right after I more or less stumbled upon it while wandering London at night.