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A Few Photos from Files.

I’ve been trying to organize my photos and it’s a terrible job. Of course I haven’t filed them very well and–this is most unfortunate!–a lot of them are missing. I have no idea what happened..

There were many memorable events during a trip to Norway for a visit with Jan and Bente, wonderful Norwegian friends from an earlier trip. The first was the opportunity to speak to several classes of about-to-graduate high school kids, all fluent in English, of course. The second was a brief, but (as you can see) spectacular train ride down a mountain, much of the ride through a tunnel to the town of Flam, located on a fjord more than a 1000 feet deep.

The town of Cook was originally built to service steam locomotives crossing the Australian outback. Today, with a total ;population of four souls, it’s only activity is refueling the diesel locomotives hauling freight and, twice week, the Indian Pacific passenger train.This is the westbound train, just a few miles into the longest perfectly straight stretch of railroad track in the world: 297 miles, straight as a string.

The other trans-continental train in Australia , the Ghan, runs north-south between Darwin and Adelaide.  Several hours out of Darwin, the train’s public address system advised us that we would shortly be crossing the Finke River. Sure enough, bit it was almost bone dry. In my reference book at home, it was described as “a major intermittent river in central Australia.”

I really like this shot … and of course getting it was just dumb luck. This photo was taken probably 90 minutes after I missed getting a shot of the man on the camel. It was probably about 7:30 in the morning and I can’t imagine anything that says people are mp]ore alike the they are different. Here a Mongol mother is taking her little daughter to school, probably in Ulan-Ude, a city of almost half-a-miillion people that was just 20-some minutes ahead of us.

This photo was taken from the dome of the Park Car that traditionally brings up the rear of VIA Rail’s premier Train #1, the westbound Canadian.  The Rocky Mountains have just come into view and we’ll be in Jasper, Alberta, in another 90 minutes. Arrival at Vancouver, British Columbia, will be tomorrow morning around breakfast time. This photo was taken two years ago. I was the 9th time I have traveled on this wonderful train.

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