Neon Telephone Sign

Telephone Sign, a photo by Dornoff Photography on Flickr.

Here is another one of the outstanding neon signs in the Portland Union Station in Portland, Oregon.

While the number of telephones is obviously decreasing, this lovely sign still points the way to room that once housed multiple pay phone booths.

This is one of several neon signs located in the building that is worth a visit when you visit Portland.

Portland, Oregon Union Station

Portland, Oregon Union Station, a photo by Dornoff Photography on Flickr.

While many cities may have a classic train train station, most of them have been altered sometimes beyond recognition.

However, Portland Union Station still looks like it did back in the hey day of the railroads including a wonderful waiting room.

I plan on getting some more pictures of this beautiful train station in the near future.

Baggage Dept Sign

Baggage Dept Sign, a photo by Dornoff Photography on Flickr.

Have to love the neon...

After my conference in Portland I took Amtrak's Cascade service to Seattle to visit my best friend.

The Portland train station is a beautiful classic station. The lobby still has many classic details including these wonderful neon signs.

I took this picture with a GE X5 super zoom camera. While it obviously did pretty good in these low light pictures, most of the other pictures were horrible.

Union Station at sunrise

Union Station at sunrise
Originally uploaded by Dornoff Photography

As I mentioned yesterday, my purpose for stopping off in Ogden was to get a picture of Union Station at sunrise. I have many pictures of the building but none of them when the sun new day glow is shining on the building.

So here is the final product. The angle was a compromise since the sun would shine into the windows at every other angle that I tried.

Trying a different perspective

Ex-Rio Grand Tunnel Motor
Originally uploaded by Dornoff Photography

Well I went a few days without showing a picture of a train but here is one that I took last Saturday but have been waiting to show.

I took this photo up in Ogden, Utah at Union Station which is home to a railway museum. The museum has several pieces of equipment to the south of the station that I have show photos of in the past.

On Saturday I stopped at Union Station to get some pictures of the station at sunrise and noticed that they had a new locomotive so I went and took a picture.

This is a former Denver, Rio Grande & Western locomotive that is referred to as a tunnel motor. If you look at the back of the locomotive you will notice vents near the bottom of the carbody. Normally a locomotive will have vents near the top of the locomotive but both Rio Grande and Southern Pacific experience overheating problems so the tunnel motor was born to prevent those issues.

In this shot I tried to do something different from the normal wedgie shot so I lowered the legs on my tripod to their lowest setting which gives this different perspective of the locomotive.

Mighty Engine of the Past...

UP Gas Turbine on Display in Ogden
Originally uploaded by Dornoff Photography

This photo is of a Union Pacific Gas Turbine engine that UP used sometime in the late 50's through the 60's. UP was looking for massive horsepower in order to pull its trains along its main line especially through Wyoming.

These engines only had one minor little problem. Or one big problem if you lived near the tracks as they were extremely noisy. So noisy in fact that many municipalities banned the use of the locomotives in their area (of course didn't that interfere with interstate commerce so became a federal issue?).

I took my first revenue ride on Front Runner one day then rode some buses in order to get pictures of the area. Finally I came back to Union Station before heading back to the transit center in order to ride Front Runner back to Salt Lake City.

It was a very hot and unusually humid day with temperatures reaching 95 degrees and the humidity level following close behind. While I may have lived in Charlotte for a couple of years that as several years ago and I was not used to the heat and humidity anymore. I was glad to get back on that nice cool Front Runner train.