Very nice Swedish model railroad

Tågresa (Train travel)

Jag tar tåget från Eskilstuna station, en modern version av de gamla motorvagnarna tar mig över broarna vid Kvicksund, till Kolbäck och vidare över slätterna till Västerås. Spåret letar sig in i obefolkade skogar på väg mot Sala. Ett snabbt tågbyte i Sala, jag saknar höjd över havet på nya stationsskylten. Huset är detsamma som förr. Undrar hur många stationshus som fanns under tågens stortid? Intercitytåget mot Uppsala ser ut som vanligt, men är nästan folktomt. Borde man inte kunna sälja lite fler biljetter om det var billigare? Det borde gå jämnt ut. Vi är 10 pers i en vagn på minst 80 platser. Konduktören har bytt den traditionella mössan mot en svart SJ-keps. Modernt, men jag hajar till. Ännu visslar han på perrongen vid avgång, i klassisk visselpipa. Min ungdoms resor, alla dessa visslingar, alla tågresor jag gjort. På väg till, på väg bort, på väg hem, på väg till älsklingen, på väg mot okända marker.

Ibland när jag står och väntar på pendeltåget i Stockholm så står det ett fjärrtåg på perrongen bredvid. Mot Kiruna, Narvik, Malmö, Berlin, Hamburg....

 Lusten att kliva på finns där, alltid. Jag reser genom ett landskap av lövskogar, nyslagna stubbåkrar i senapsgult, gröna höstsådder och granplanteringar. Just nu är vi mitt emellan sommar och höst, svala nätter men ännu är det varmt när solen skiner. Blommorna går i frö, bara några enstaka ettårigar blommar vidare. Nypon, rönnbär och havtorn har röda bär i stor mängd. Snart är höstens flammande färger här, det saknas bara några frostnätter.

Min resa tar slut i Uppsala, idag var det hit jag skulle. Domkyrkans spiror sticker hål på dimmolnens gråmulna himmel, snart tittar nog solen fram. Slottet ligger bastant och tryggt på bergets topp. Uppsala, min studiestad, min glädjetid.

(A note for English speaking readers, I describe a train ride through the Swedish landscape from Eskilstuna to Uppsala. A lot of memories from train rides in my youth too.)

Translation by LS:

I take the train from Eskilstuna station, a modern version of the old rail buses take me over the bridges at Kvicksund, to Kolbäck and then over the plains to Västerås. The track finds its way into uninhabited forests towards Sala.  A quick train change in Sala, I miss the sea elevation on the new train station sign. The station house is the same as before.  I wonder how many stations there were during the trains great times? The Intercity train towards Uppsala looks like usual, but it nearly empty.   Wouldn't they sell a lot more tickets if they were cheaper?  It would be about the same cost.  We are 10 people in a car with at least 80 seats.  The conductor has changed the traditional hat to a black SJ-baseball hat. Modern, but I are taken aback.  Still he whistles on the platform when the train is about to leave, in a classic whistle.  My youth's travels, all these whistles, all the train trips I have taken.  On the way to things, away from things, on the way home, on the way to the sweetheart, on the way to unknown destinations. 

Sometimes when I stand and wait for the commuter train in Stockholm there is a long-distance train on the neighboring platform. Destination Kiruna, Narvik, Malmö, Berlin, Hamburg...

The desire to get on is there all the time, always.  I travel through a landscape of deciduous forests, newly cut mustard-yellow fields, green freshly fall sown areas, and spruce plantations. Right now we are between summer and fall, cool nights but still warm when the sun is up.  The flowers are setting seeds; only a few annuals continue flowering.  Rose hips, mountain ash, and sea buckthorn have red berries in large masses.  Soon the flaming colors of the fall is here; we are just waiting for a few frost nights.

My trip ends in Uppsala, it was here I was going.  The cathedrals spires cut their holes into the foggy grey-clouded sky; soon the sun will probably show its face.  The castle is mounted on the hill as a heavy and secure thing.  Uppsala, my college years, my happy times.

Riding trains in Norway

In Norway they know how to make something solidly real. Norway, with is mountains, fjords, and trains in gorgeous places.

Here is a clip from a 10-hour riding-the-train-through-the-seasons movie (thanks PP):

A giant miniature train place

When EH and her family were here last year we visited Northlandz, an amazing model train museum here in New Jersey.  Now there is a little movie about it and how they photographed it. Watch it.

Here are some photos from this great place.  Visit Northlandz if you have the chance, even if you have never liked model trains. (More photos from our visit here.)

Seeing America sideways (from a long-distance train)

When you travel by train you never look forward, maybe a little backward, but mostly sideways. Quickly landscapes swish past, except at stations where speeds slow down.

 

You see the backyard of American lives, not the front meant for eye consumption.  What you see are the alleys, backyards, abandoned lots, weedy places and industrial parks far from the manicured front lawns of highways and city streets.

 

Bridges and tunnels provide structure and landscape channels - light or dark, over water or through rock.  Both have that sense of danger, non is completely safe, but fascinating and exciting. Better to be back on firm ground though. In the forests and swamps no people are present, their sometimes presence just marked by old, dried-out ATV ruts, a barely holding-together deer stand in a tree, or the remnants of a dock, long since gone. I imagine alligators and beavers in the lakes, but see white egrets and maybe a deer.

Through the backyards and hidden lives of Americans, from swimming-pools so small they are non-swimmable, to room extension after room extension built out back, maybe to fit ever-growing families.

Like an invisible snake  the polished train passes through, nobody, except some young excited kids that not have have learned to ignore, pays attention to the metal Amtrak tech wonder, pushed by electricity down the tracks.  Everybody else doesn't even look up, they go on with their business, be it hanging laundry, carrying groceries, running a red light, yelling at some kids, waiting for the bus with the headphones plugged in, or doing homework behind a dirty window...

Weedy plants are everywhere, covering up the empty spaces people left behind - an old parking lot, railroad sidings, ruins of factories with their hand-painted names that can barely be seen on the old bricks, and neglected yards.  Abundant green life everywhere. They are pretty, but uncontrolled - red leaves color the landscape in sunset colors in the middle of the October day.  Sumac, kudzu, virginia creeper, mugwort and tree-of-heaven... Each plant has a story and the humans have stories about it, all linked to human histories and miseries.

The train on its shiny steel tracks cuts through it all, relentless, just passing by on to distant places, different lives. Behind it are kids starting, pointing, and laughing, and maybe imagining jumping on, one day.

(Written after taking the train today from Trenton to Washington, DC, and passing through Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore, Maryland, and over Delaware River and Susquehanna River. All photos are taken from the train, many at full speed, so they are of course blurry, and therefore accurate.)

Stamp of the Day: Zip codes! (postnummer)

This stamp oozes 1970s in its bubbly, rainbow-colored design, don't you think?  And it is celebrating the zipcode (or reminding people to add it to their letters, or both).  I love its happiness...

The deer and the train

Worlds Apart, originally uploaded by ericwill.

Another fantastic train photo by our friend EW. Click on the photo for more information. This photo just won a big award, congratulations Eric!

Book reviews: Patagonian travels, one great, one not

 A few months ago I picked up an old Swedish book given to me by a friend, who I have long forgotten, but it was a book I had wanted to read for a long time: Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia.  I think my copy might be the first edition from 1981 in Swedish.  I dug in and started to read, with high expectations, because this was a 'real travel writer'!.  As you might know, I mostly read right before I fall asleep, maybe half an hour a day, at the most.
  Bruce Chatwin leaves work and travels to Patagonia, seemingly unplanned, a place he has always wanted to visit.  His travel diary is not a diary in the regular sense, more broken pieces and fragments of text from his experiences in Patagonia with inserts of history, commentary, and cultural reflections.

And here is the main problem.  Bruce stands outside the whole travel experience.  He reports like a objective journalist, not a person present in the moment.  And he even fails at being objective, because many times you can clearly feel the aversion he has to the people he meets.  It is not a boring book, and the text is excellently written, beautiful in fact, but it is not a good book.  You don't get a feel for the place, and it is too fragmented.

The detachedness of Bruce Chatwin is disturbing.  I can't remember any of the persons he describes in such detail, no stories, no places, no names or characters. No recollection.  There is no focus at all.   How can that be?  It was like nothing as memorable.  I know that this is considered one of the best travel books ever written, but I will have to disagree, strongly.  So I gave up, 10-20 pages from the end.

A few weeks later I needed a book with me when I had to wait for my daughter at the dentists.  I looked in our bookshelf and found "The Old Patagonian Express" by Paul Theroux!  I remember buying this book for my husband, but none of us had read it yet.  I brought it with me, read a few pages at the dentist, and was hooked.  And last night, I finished it.  What a difference.  What joy.  I envy people that haven't read this book, they have such a good read in front of them.

Paul Theroux's book was published a year (1979) after Bruce Chatwin's book and they were friends.  The books are like night and day in difference.  While Bruce Chatwin talks about Patagonia, he never explains how he got there, and his book has not one structured path in it.  Paul Theroux, on the other hand, has a plan, and he loves travel, which for him means to GET TO another place, not BE IN another place.  And I think he is right.  True travel is the transportation phase, the active movement through places, not being dumped in a place and staying there.

The way Paul Theroux traveled to Patagonia is the focus, the structure, of the whole book.  He gets on the subway and then commuter train in Boston in a snowstorm, and then takes local train after local train down to Mexico, through Central America, along the Andes, through long Argentina, and then eventually ends up on The Old Patagonian Express, the narrowgauge steam train that goes to Esquel.  And then the book is over.

This book is not about Patagonia, this book is about human nature, nature and humans. Culture, politics, some natural history, pestering travel companions, good and bad hotel rooms, dusty old railroad cars, giant steaks in dining cars, delays, landslides, revolts, and rats chewing holes in the ceiling above your bed.  It also has great interactions between Paul Theroux and the people he meets, from street urchins in Colombia to impossible Mr Thornberry in Costa Rica and the Argentinians need to be superior while having the right to complain about anything in their own country (and nobody else should).

It is a fantastic story, a meandering travel path through not only North and Latin American geography, but also classic literature (Paul Theroux discusses the books he reads during the trip), and it feels real and human.  He is not trying to be some übermensch, not someone that stands above or besides his co-travelers or people he meets.  He just is.  Now I have to read his other travel books!  Wow, what a read!  Yes, A+ and five stars of course.

There are a lot of great passages in The Old Patagonian Express, and here is one that I think fits this review pretty well:

Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

And now, The Old Patagonian Express is mine, forever.  The physical book is still my husband's book, of course. 

Saguaro's bend

This photo is by our great friend and railroad photographer EW, and is from the state (Arizona) that might, might become the college home of LA next summer. 

Nice saguaro cactus, and, oh wait, there is a train there too!?  Click on link for larger image. And if you missed it, here is another amazing photo by EW.

Christmas stories from New Jersey

Reflections and lessons learned this year. 

1. It is actually snowing on our Christmas Eve!  Snowing, unexpected, and wonderful.  We are getting a white Christmas after all. Lets see if it lasts until tomorrow morning.

2.  I know you should buy local, but sometimes you need to buy further-local to get the really good stuff:  Christmas ham from Dakins Farm in Vermont, and many kinds of Vermont cheeses...  And yes, red currants from Chile, which is a sin, but they tasted better than expected. Homemade green tomato chutney balanced it all out on the cheese plate.


3.  Our little gingerbread train put together by AREA and AC.  The kit didn't come with a smoke stack on the locomotive, so that had to be added, and then moved to the right spot (I will say no more... you would think that based on the number of train pictures in this house that the position of a smokestack wouldn't be a strange fact :)  Note the siding track, and the rock sugar trees that fell over in the Sandy hurricane.  Chocolate and licorice fills up the tender.


4.  Never get a blue spruce as a christmas tree.  They look great - dense and full, but the needles are horror stories.  I had to put on a raincoat with the hood up to be able to get under the tree to get the tree stand attached.  This is a really mean tree - we wore thick gloves when we put on the lights.  I prefer the softer Norway spruces... So, our tree this year is a true sharpie... and decorated similarly.


5.  If you make Jansson's temptation with cream instead of milk  it tastes about 50 times better.

6.  After you make Swedish meatballs, save the drippings and fat from the pan and add it to the brunkål (brown cabbage), and that will also taste 50 times better.

7.  For gravlax, simplest is the best - salt, sugar, dill, and black pepper.... and a giant hunk of sockeye salmon from the wildest of Alaska. If you want the recipe, just holler here on the blog.

Columbia River Sunset

Columbia River Sunset, originally uploaded by ericwill.

Another fantastic train photo from Eric. This is from Oregon, USA.

The immensity of it all still lingers...

Just some updates on what is going on on the Sourlands 8 days after hurricane Sandy.

It is SNOWING.  Many, many centimeters. We are having a freaking snowstorm, another nor'easter storm. I just heard the snowplow go by on the road outside, which is a very good sign.  (Both that it is a plow and that it is on a truck, i.e., trucks can get into the neighborhood now).

Our neighbors have their power back, it was fixed tonight.  We got internet back around the same time, which is pretty amazing.  The power and internet companies must actually have collaborated. Most likely the neighborhood is now accessible by fire trucks and the like.  They weren't this morning, but if they fixed the lines, then now, after 8 days, we can feel safer.  One road is probably still closed, but they are working on that too. Many of our neighbors do not have power yet though, because their powerlines were ripped out of their houses when trees feel on them.  It will take longer for them and I feel really sorry about all their troubles. The township has gotten lots of letters and calls from us about the situation, and it actually made a difference.  Good.

Bad news - Election results show that the two open seats on the township committee were won by the two republicans.  They won with only 50 votes more than the Democratic candidates, out of over 9000 votes cast.  Incredible. So, two more years of republicans running the town.  (Voting results for the Somerset county is here, and yes, Obama won in the county too.)  There is always The Swedish Party as an alternative for disillusioned Americans  :)
Very good news - Obama won the presidency again.  As someone said 'The republicans made sure that Obama would become a 2-term president'.  Presidents here can only be elected for 2 terms, so now he can focus on doing the right thing and not get reelected.  Like, put some bank fraud CEO's in jail, etc. :)  Mitt Romney seems to have disappeared instantaneously.  

The NJ railroad system suffered horrible losses.  Just look at the railroad bridge after the storm in the photo above (more info here).  Apparently they lost 1/3 of their locomotives and 1/4 of their passenger cars in the storm.  Imagine that.  That must be many hundreds of locomotives that are gone, so the commute to New York City will be hell for many months for many people.

I believe that the mental effects of Sandy will live on for decades in New Jersey.  People will try to be more self-sufficient.  Have more gasoline and generators ready. Get water bottles. Take weather reports seriously.  Value friends and family more.  Not trust township administrators and politicians as much.  Friends and relatives of friends of mine have lost everything.  Whole houses that washed away, and all that is left is a foundation.  Some people got their cars flooded.  Trees on roofs that cracked houses.  Horrific storm night memories, with fear of breaking windows in high-rises in NYC.  Children that lost everything.  It is just so incredibly sad, and maybe a fact of life because weather does exist and always have, but it seems so incredibly wasteful and sad.  I am sorry I am harping on on this, the hurricane I mean, but the rest of the world goes on, and we see it and are reminded about Sandy all the time.  Even if electric and internet and gasoline is soon back to normal, the New Jersey world has changed, permanently.  And so have we.

And finally, just some images to really show how big this storm was. 

(Image by NASA - more photos of Sandy from NASA here)

 

(Image by wunderground.com, a weather website)

(Image by NOAA)

Capital scenes (Washington DC)

In May this year I had to travel to Washington DC for a conference and took a few hours to see the sights:


The Washington Monument.  Impressive. 


The White House.  I wonder how many spy cameras that are in the flower beds. 


I wonder if the President ever sends out Secret Service to get him a Polish dog?  This cart was right next to the White House.


This anti-war tent vigil has been going on for three decades, every day, every hour, every minute.  It is right in front of the White House, and is more of a statement than a disturbance.  I wish we lived in a world with more peace.


Outside the US Department of Agriculture they had planted parsley in the flower beds, and it was flowering nicely and greenly. So appropriate and unusual.

Inside the USDA was a small museum about food history, which included this great quote:

 "...the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil." Abraham Lincoln

They also had a lot of old posters from World War I and II.


Don't waste Food.  We need these posters for today's consumers.


Lick the Platter Clean - I remember us kids saying we could lick our plates because our grandpa did it too.


There was also a little tiny exhibit about the old ice trains that transported blocks of ice for refrigeration around the country.  I am glad there are electric refrigerators nowadays, I wouldn't want to get back to a time when you had to handle 50 lbs (25 kg) ice blocks. 

Track Speed to Port Jervis

Track Speed to Port Jervis, originally uploaded by ericwill.

I just love this photo, taken by one of our friends. Isn't it gorgeous?

"Chesapeake & Ohio 4-8-4 614 crosses the Hackensack River with a Hoboken to Port Jervis excursion on October 18, 1997."

Here is another 0-8-0.
Technically it is a 0-8-0 T, for "tank" because it carries the water and coal on the engine itself not behind in a tender.

I love this engine.

Philatelic blast from the past: Polish steam

I found these in my old stamp collection.  Steam locomotives on Polish stamps.  PP, can you help out with the ID? British engines?  The top one seem to have a horizonal cylinder with a very strange gear work.

if the trains come...

Yell-low line, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

... then you have to yell before you become low on the track - look here to get it...

Soon to an IMAX theatre near you: Rocky Mountain Express

I have a feeling that there are plenty of people in this family who want to see this movie.

Happy Birthday, PP!

Full steam ahead! (through the sage brush in Antonito, Colorado...)

Walk the High Line

On southern Manhattan on the eastern side of the island in the neighborhoods of Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea and the Meatpacking District are the remnants of an elevated train line. It was used since the 1930s to get the dangerous freight trains off the street, and shipped in produce, meat and wares to stores, warehouses, and markets in lower Manhattan.  As trucks took over this type of transportation, the High Line because less and less used, with the last train delivering frozen turkeys in the 1980s.  Since then it was abandoned and became an eye sore, until a visionary proposed to make it into an elevated long, narrow park.  Imagine a steam locomotive coming by on that elevated railroad.  It once did...

The High Line is a long narrow park, with gorgeous plantings and many places to sit and ponder the city scapes. The first section opened in 2009, and I walked it a few weeks ago.  Two more sections will open (one just did), and when finished it will run from 34 Street all the way past down 13th Street.  In many places, the High Line is the only real green you can see in this urban landscape.

Right next to the High Line are abandoned old factory and warehouse buildings, inhabited only be pigeons and rats (and maybe some homeless people too). You have the urban history within literally hand's and feet's reach, and you walk the line past in time. 

I love the benches, with shapes inspired by railroad sidings ('sidospår' in Swedish).

You can see New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson River from the High Line.  Tugboats, ships, ferry terminals, they are still there.

Parts of the elevated tracks are wider and have been made into meeting spaces and performance scenes.  Even trees are planted up here. I bet they have a large water bill.

This railroad spur once went into this building to unload cargo, but now it is a wildflower meadow.  What a juxtaposition with the industrial, natural and architectural all meeting at one point.

You are not allowed to walk on the tracks, except here. I love 'frogs'.

You can walk under people's bedrooms.  And underneath the High Line is a Bier Garten.

The High Line is really an amazing place.  It brings people outside, and it is green snake oasis in a environment of hot (in the summer) or cold (in the winter) concrete, metal, and glass.  It elevates the whole neighborhood, from just regular dirty New York (with fancy bars and stores mixed in) so something that is awesome. The person that pulled this off and got this done, has done amazing things for southern Manhattan.  Finally some green is back on the island.

I didn't see one weed on my hour-long walk.  There are gardeners everywhere and the plantings are impeccable, made to look natural but with horticultural varieties and species. It is gorgeous, designed, and honestly, not naturally planted, but who cares?  This is really like painting with living plants, and I love it too. And after all, the plants are growing on a railroad track, in the air, on a man made structure.  I was wondering what would happen if you stopped weeding and watering - probably just what happened when the railroad was abandoned in the 1980s.  Weeds and trees came in, and now they are all gone.  Removed for more organized plants and less dirty, less chaotic plant life.

Many more photos from my visit here.