mattblaze

@[email protected] @[email protected] All this means (in the US) that you're in practice limited to going where Amtrak goes, hooked up to their scheduled trains, and you probably can't occupy the car when it reaches its destination in some rail yard somewhere.

@[email protected] @[email protected] One of the problems is that unlike a car, a plane, or a boat, you can't move your own train on someone else's tracks yourself. They have to haul it for you, with crews familiar with and qualified on the specific sections of track you're moving on. And passenger cars and freight cars don't mix, which means basically that you have to hire a dedicated locomotive and crew just to move your car. If they're even willing to do it.

@fritzoids @jgrg Ringling Brothers circus used to operate two full length trains, which transported both all the circus sets (and animals) and housed most of the staff and performers. They had relationships with all the major freight railroads to move and store the train to all their venues. When they shut down a few years ago, I looked into buying one of the dorm cars. Less expensive than I expected, but there was no way you could get the freight railroads to move and store a single car.

@fritzoids @jgrg There's a *huge* infrastructure for handling private airplanes. You can fly to almost any general aviation airport, store your place, get fuel and service, rent a car, whatever you need.

For a railcar, every single time you want to move it, you'd have to deal with people who have never heard of anything like this before. Amtrak has a tariffed rate for moving private cars, but most of the freight railroads (most of the US) really don't want the business.

@[email protected] @[email protected] I actually looked into this. There's a small community of people with private railcars. Most are leased out for excursions, but some are owned for personal use.

It's not THAT expensive to buy one - comparable to the cost of an RV. But the cost of moving it is fairly high, it requires a lot of planning, and you need a place to store it connected to the national rail system (which means either leasing space in a rail yard or owning a railroad siding).

Fun idea, but impractical.

@fritzoids @jgrg It's ultimately just an RV that you don't have to drive and with more limited parking options.

The Waldorf-Astoria is perhaps New York's most prominent monument to jazz age luxury and glamor. It's been the traditional residence for US presidents and foreign heads of state when in town (the "presidential suite" was meant rather literally there).

Built over the below-grade railyard of Grand Central Terminal, the hotel was equipped with a private rail siding and platform where guests could park their personal railcars(!). (Andy Warhol once threw a party on the platform.)

This was captured with a DSLR and a 19mm shifting lens, from a balcony of another building.

It's mostly an exercise in angles and symmetry. The vaguely wedge-shaped dark cloud that appeared overhead, following the lines of the buildings, created a fortuitous moment.

The Waldorf was closed for an extensive renovation shortly after this was made and just recently re-opened. Many of the rooms have been converted into condo apartments.

Captured with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digiron-W (@ f/6.3) lens. Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50), Cambo WRS-5005 Camera (shifted vertically -22mm, pushing the limits of the lens). 16x9 crop.

This fire escape stairwell, retrofitted onto the back of Georgetown's Healy Hall, reminded me a bit of a Piet Mondrian painting. Hard afternoon shadows added to the abstract view.

Here, as elsewhere, infrastructure is heroic.

The scale of these wind farms is beyond what we're equipped to process in day-to-day human experience. They conquer the landscape in ways we can't fully comprehend even when they're in front of us. In a sense, they're abstract sculptures of themselves, mostly visible in fleeting glances from interstate highways or airplane windows.

This was captured near the Tesla substation (no relation to the car company) near Altamont Pass with a DSLR and a 400mm lens, compressing the turbines in a way that made them resemble a histogram.

There's a lot of power being generated in those hills. There was an audible hum in the air and vibrations could be felt in the ground. In some spots, the camera rebooted from induced currents.

Infrastructure like this is easy to ignore, but has an accidental beauty that I think is worth examining.