Random Raily Stuff From PoR and Gaithersburg - 2009ish

Train break! Eastbound Q401, with elephant-style power on the lead.

A rare unit train of sulfur tankers, westbound passing Metropolitan Grove Road.

Old Main Line to Baltimore on the left, Metropolitan Branch to Washington on the Right and E. Francis Baldwin's gorgeous Point of Rocks station in-between.

It's a SIGN!

A tiny new tree grows among the bones of an unlucky deer near Point of Rocks.

Point of Rocks Tunnel - west portal. Boo!

Ghost trains and weird noises and shiny rails.

Then this little guy fluttered by.

Sometimes, I love my mistakes.

Rocks was the place to be on this Summer day, as storms and their awesome thunderheads were all over Frederick county all afternoon.

More later. A bit more fun with the baby panda, some funky time exposures in the dark . . . and Carolina Lighthouses. Eventually.

Signs With Soul. And Whelks. And Paw Paw and Pizza.

Signs! Kind of self-explanatory, I guess. Above - [Maris]'s 1999 shot of a bear crossing sign near Ocala, Florida. Yes - Florida has bears. Fewer every year, of course.

The summit of Mt. Washington, NH - 1998. Still home to the highest wind speed recorded in the history of the planet.

Mystic, Connecticut - 1998. No, we didn't try the pizza. We figured if Julia and Annabeth weren't working, why bother?

[Maris]'s shot of old-timey railroad crossing sign, somewhere in Rhode Island in 2000.

Neon and pandas in Islamorada, Florida - 2000.

The Road Kill Café in York Beach, Maine - 1998. I don't remember anything else that happened, that night.

How can you resist an antique table that was just built? You can't, that's how. Somewhere on US Route 11 in Virginia in 1998.

This crop is all fuzzy because it wasn't the subject of my shot; it turned up in the background and I didn't see it until the prints came back. It's under a bridge in Brunswick, Maryland - or it was, in 1991.

The National Zoo in Washington, DC in 2009. I was shooting quarter-second exposures, hand-held. We're going back next year with a tripod.

Carnivorous Whelks! Owl Head, Maine - 2004.

Paw Paw, West Virginia - 2010. Everyone should visit Paw Paw at least once.

Thanks for stopping by. Back soon...