Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: Ustecky Kraj

I'd still like to fiddle with this shot in Gimp a bit more, as I feel the colors could be a lot more brilliant. This was the last film shot I took on my Karlovy Vary trip before the sun went down.....at almost 9:00 p.m. Yeah, no kidding. It stayed light very, very late.

Here's an alternate shot that I liked better, with a mixed freight in the background. Indeed, Most yard hosts passenger trains, coal trains, and mixed freights.

Here's the passenger station for Most.

This coal train, headed by a Class 127 electric locomotive, is dedicated soley to the MUS mining railway. The 127 Class is exclusive to this line and the SU mining railway in Sokolova, as it runs on 1,500v DC current, and is dedicated solely to heavy freight service, with a maximum speed of only 65Km/h (40 m.p.h.). Power is surprisingly low, at only 2,937 horsepower (2,190Kw). This rail line carries lignite from the surrounding mines, which are among the only coal mines still active in Bohemia. They've been so active historically, in fact, that numerous towns and villages, and even the city centre of Most, have been destroyed by strip mining and subsidence. The world record was set for the largest building relocated on wheels, when the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary was moved from the original Most centre to the new one in 1975. See these links for more details: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Assumption_of_the_Virgin_Mary_ (Most) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most

Here's a generic, color photo of Nadrazi Chomutov, in contrast to the black and white posted earlier.

This snowplow, technically a snowspreader, if I'm not mistaken, was parked in Chomutov waiting for the winter. Normally, these types of plows have much higher blades, but this one may be too light for them. It isn't clear whether this one is steam or diesel powered, as I don't know much about it, but I'm assuming diesel. Note that it has CD, and not CD Cargo or SZDC, livery. This photo has been heavily edited due to the setting sun overexposing the original, the negative being damaged and/or dirty, and graffiti fouling the original scene. The CD livery is, however, real.

This photo isn't of anything special, but is the better of two shots I took from the train in Chomutov on the way to Karlovy Vary, a city I had always wanted to visit as it's one of the main Czech tourist destinations that I've so far missed. I kept this one and uploaded it mostly because I liked the composition. This is also my first shot posted to Flickr (I think) taken with C41 black and white film, or at least the first taken with Kodak BW400CN.

I originally had no idea what this locomotive was because the photo was so blurred, but eventually I found the info that I needed. This is Ex-CSD 475.179, which is an operable 475 Class 4-8-2 based at Decin, as seen here. I don't have the exact build date, but it would have been sometime between 1947 and 1950. The power rating is 1480kW (1985 horsepower), and the maximum speed is officially 100Km/h, although obviously a locomotive this powerful with medium-size drivers could probably do more.

As my train headed north towards the border, I took several shot of the snowy scenes as they went by, but many were limited by poot light and the tinted windows on the train. This one came out better than most. The church is the church of St. Mary.

Usti nad Labem also has a castle, Hrad Strekov, which dates to the beginning of the 14th Century. The bridge of sorts in the foreground is actually not the famous Usti nad Labem bridge, but a sluice gate on the River Labe called the Strekovska Zdymadla.

Jumping ahead, this was on the final leg of my trip back to Prague, the day following my departure from Cardiff, and with a completely different camera, my Zeiss-Ikon Contina LK that I took to Swansea. I shot this just after we crossed the border at Decin, as you can clearly see Decinsky Zamek up on the castle mound.