The Trains In Spain

     It's a beautiful spring morning and we are aboard a Renfe high speed train whipping through the Spanish countryside. We are on our way to Cuenca, an incredibly beautiful town about 170 km. southeast of Madrid. Our travel time on the train will be just under an hour. Yup, they're that fast!

    We had caught the train in the early hours at Atocha train station in Madrid. Within a few minutes we had left the city and were cruising along at an average speed of about 280/290 km/h. I can't get on a train without thinking of my Dad. I am the son of a railway man. My Father was a conductor / brakeman on the Ontario Northland Railway. Fifty-one years after his passing, his kid is riding a train in Spain with speeds that reach over 300km/h!  I only wish that he could have experienced this ride. He would have loved it! 

    Early in our time in Spain we had visited the Museo del Ferrocarril (Railway Museum) in Madrid. It is a very cool place! It is located in the former Delicias Station opened by King Alfonso XII and Queen Maria Christina in 1880. 

    On the day that we were there, the museum was hosting a flea market with lots of vendors selling a wide variety of merchandise. I thought it was a great idea. It provided a source of interest for those who may not be as interested in trains as railway nerds like me. Also, near the front of the museum, a solo trumpet player was laying down some very cool jazz. Not your typical railway museum! The old station train shed provided some interesting lighting and I had a great time making photographs of a subject I love in both colour and black and white.

    

  My interest in trains and all things railroady goes back to when I was a kid. Quite often I would receive books about trains as gifts at Christmas or for my birthday. Usually these books featured pictures of trains from around the world. I remembered seeing a picture of a Spanish Talgo train in one of them. The Talgo was a very cool streamlined design for its time. It caught the fancy of kid growing up in small town Northern Ontario. It was a bit surreal to finally see the train in a railway museum in Madrid more than fifty years later.

 

     After our day in the amazingly beautiful town of Cuenca we caught a high speed evening train back to Madrid. At the end of the coach was a screen featuring information about the the train, including its speed. I managed to snap a picture as it topped out at over 300 km/h. 

   

As I stepped of the train on our return to Madrid, I noticed a distinctive logo near the doorframe of the coach.

You guessed it . "Talgo."

In the words of the late great Harry Chapin, "All my life's a circle."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yjxWfyxpqY

...more later

Yup! It's Late by Gord Barker

    Okay, I know it's late! For some reason, I thought that I had an extra Saturday to get this post done. Yeah, some day I'll learn how to read a calendar! In addition to that, I discarded the original idea that I was going to use. This resulted in a state of writer's block. After that the demands of the day job interfered and...   Enough excuses! I'm late to the deadline and I apologize profusely.

    That being said, the writer's block is still there and I've got readers who want me to produce something! Okay. Here goes!

............Long pause...............................Very long pause.....................................................

    Perhaps the toughest part of being a photographer and blogger is meeting deadlines. Back when I was a commercial photographer in the dinosaur days of film, I worked under one very strict adage, "Clients don't pay for excuses!" They want high quality work and they want it delivered on time. Period!                                                                                                                      

      A while back I had a conversation with a photographer who operates a local studio. I remember her saying to me, "You're lucky. You get to shoot whatever you want whenever you want." In a way, she was right. I don't rely solely on photography or writing to pay the bills so, to that extent, I guess that I'm a freelancer in the truest sense of the word. 

     But to achieve any success in the creative world, I have to be my own toughest critic. Ultimately, I'm working for the most critical client  of all. Me! 

     Strangely enough, not having a paying client can actually make meeting deadlines more difficult. I mean my deadlines are self imposed. Financially, I'm not paying a penalty for not meeting them. It can be far too easy to tell myself that no one really cares if I'm a little late or if I don't publish at all. I mean, no one is paying me for this stuff. 

    But the reality is that I'm being paid with something far more valuable than money. What I'm getting is real appreciation and loyalty. My readership may be a small one, but they look forward to the blog posts and photos that I put out. I try to consistently publish on the last Saturday of each month. I once wrote and published a blog post on a friend's coffee table when I was out of town for the weekend. Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea and enough photos stashed on my cell phone to pull off that little stunt!

     I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've got to try a little harder to consistently get the work out on time. I owe it to my readers. And, as someone who enjoys creating this stuff as much as I do, I also owe it to myself.

...more later