Photos by John Elk
From our world-traveling friends John and Claude Elk in Cambodia: "Battambang for a few days, where the most unusual thing we did was take a ride on the bamboo train, a single platform, a driver, and each time you meet another 'train' coming toward you, you have to take it all apart in about 30 seconds and let it pass—the rails were so crooked and misaligned it was a jostling ride through the countryside, but what fun!"
South Newfane, Vermont (photo by Lynn Forrest)
Joel Maybury enjoys snowstorm in Washington, D.C., January 21.
Newfane, Vermont (snow on the way December 8)
Photographer John Elk and his wife Claude were enjoying a tent camping trip and awesome scenery in Utah's Canyonlands this week, when suddenly a late-summer monsoon created flash floods, forcing them to retreat to a hotel in Escalante.
Train tracks cross trail to Nairn Falls, north of Whistler.
By Peter Loeb, Riptide Correspondent
We took a grand circle tour of British Columbia by car and ferry. After staying a few days in Vancouver, we took the ferry to Vancouver Island and drove to Campbell River for a night. In the morning we hiked to Elk Falls.
The next day we drove to Port Hardy and stayed the night to catch the ferry at 5:30 the next morning. The ferry trip up the Inside Passage to Prince Rupert took 16 hours. In Prince Rupert, we took a boat tour to see grizzly bears. We saw several bears, but the highlight was seeing a mama grizzly and her two cubs.
On the way back from seeing the grizzlies, we saw several bald eagles.
After two nights in Prince Rupert, we drove to Smithers, where we had a view of Hudson Bay Mountain as well as many other snow-capped mountains along the way.
From Smithers, we drove to Prince George for one night, then to Williams Lake for a night, and then to Whistler for a night, then to Vancouver. North of Whistler, we saw more snow-capped mountains, a glacier, and waterfalls.
We saw Twin Falls.
And Nairn Falls.
From Whistler, we drove to the Vancouver airport to fly home, but along the way, we stopped to see Brandywine Falls.
And Shannon Falls.
By John Maybury, Editor & Publisher
Once again, yours truly just went riding the rails around California. The occasion was Amtrak's March 13 detour of the southbound Coast Starlight train due to planned trackwork at San Jose.
At Oakland, all passengers bound for points south (other than the final destination of Los Angeles) disembarked and took the bus (too bad for them). Then we rabid railfans hopped onboard to join the LA-bound people, making for a small but lively nonstop "express." (Experienced riders will appreciate the ironic quotation marks; Amtrak is known to operate at an average speed well under 55 miles per hour.)
So the doubledecker train creaked out of the East Bay, leaving the main line and snaking up scenic Niles Canyon to Sunol, then on to Pleasanton, Livermore, over green Altamont Pass (dotted with cows and windmills), and into the smoggy Central Valley.
We traveled the old Southern Pacific route alongside Golden State Highway (99) via Modesto, Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield. Fruit and nut orchards stocked with beehives were in pink-and-white bloom. The human landscape was a messy mix of truck stops, motels, gas stations, taco wagons, and junkyards.
The real visual treats began as we climbed up the grade and around the Caliente horseshoe bend to the Tehachapi loop, where the tracks wind corkscrew 360 degrees. On a long freight train, the engineer can look down and see the tail end of his train disappearing into a tunnel that he is passing above.
Photographers affectionately known in the railbuff community as "foamers" appeared at various spots along this line, taking pictures of our train negotiating these dramatic curves through the mountains.
As the sunlight faded, we rolled past Mojave, with its high-desert boneyard airport full of parked jetliners, and passed Palmdale and Lancaster on our way into Soledad Canyon, and finally across the San Fernando Valley toward our final destination, grand old Union Station in Los Angeles.
Our "train crew" stayed overnight at nearby Metro Plaza Hotel (next to Olvera Street), and in the morning returned to Union Station for the ride home on the beautiful coast route. Along the way, we saw miles and miles of fields planted with broccoli and strawberries. A huge, orange sunset greeted us as we passed Elkhorn Slough and Moss Landing. Arriving in the Bay Area, we left the train and gladly breathed the clean, cool air.
If you are interested in Amtrak detours or regular runs or private trains, register at amtrak.com and explore sites like trainorders.com and publications like Trains magazine. If you have rail news of interest, please click Comments (below) to share it with our readers.
Bonifacio, Corsica (John Elk photos)
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