Refractive Reasoning: 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.