Some of my favorite railfan sites and adventures, along with some notes on the technical aspects of putting this stie together.
Railfanning Notes
Some of my favorites
Favorite railroad museums
- York, U.K.
Without a doubt the finest railroad museum I have ever visited, indicative of a country that truly appreciates its railroad heritage. It simply looks like a museum, and includes a sweeping range of displays and rolling stock. I skipped the Cathedral to spend the day here.
- Sacramento, Calif.
This is a close call, and is a very close second to York. I found it a hair less accessible than York, but was otherwise equally impressed in all aspects of this incredible display.
Honorable Mentions
- Steamtown National Historic Site, Scranton: near-great but needs to grow a bit to be more than just a tribute to the Lackawanna's shop complex.
- B & O Railroad Museum, Baltimore: A stirring tribute to the B&O's Mount Hope shops and an excellent all-round, one-of-a-kind collection.
Favorite tourist roads
- North Conway, N.H.,
First class operation start-to-finish.
- Sheepscot Station, Maine,
Rebuilding a two-foot gauge former common carrier with live steam and great people.
- Shannonbridge, Ireland,
A tour of a working bog-harvesting facility; while kind of like an open pit mine in terms of tearing-up the environment, efforts at mitigation and an open, welcoming attitude make it worthwhile.
Favorite railfan spots
Selkirk Yard
: well of course!- : there just aren't enough Amtraks west of Albany, but it's nice to watch the bridge swing for Captain JP's cruises.
Amsterdam (N.Y.) Amtrak Station
: a nice curve to the west frames photos coming and going.Pennsylvania Station, New York
: from 9th Avenue and 32nd Street, a view down into the inner workings.Union Station, Washington, D.C.
: from the public parking garage looking out over the approach to the station, see inbounds, outbounds, and switching moves.Horseshoe Curve, Altoona, Penn.
: even non-railfans/railroaders know its something special.
And a rule to remember
All of the iron and steel and electrons are nice, but it's the people that make the railroads run.
General Site Comments
- All of the pages are written long-hand, without the use of an HTML editor
(these pages are written on a PC using any available ASCII text editor,
preferably one with line numbers: when possible, I use the Unix or Linux environment,
where I use Emacs). For DOS, there is a nice
text editor called "Programmers File Editor," PFE, available (as of June 2010) at the
PFE Home Page
- The pages are generally formatted for an 800 by 600 video display;
whenever possible, provisions are made to insure that these pages will also appear well on a 640 by 480 display.
Some pages with wide graphics or tables will scroll at 800 by 600
(e.g., the GG1 page requires 1024 by 768; the
is nearly 2000 pixels wide (and pops-up in its own window)).
- Every effort is made to insure that all pages will read equally well (although not necessarily identically)
on all browsers (and across all platforms as well, such as "smart phones").
- The standards of the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C)[*] are always the standards followed, as opposed to guidelines of any particular browser supplier.
All pages conform to W3C XHTML 1.1 specification, are validated using the W3C
HTML/XHTML
validator, and are so marked.
- For additional programming information, see DocSteve Web Coding Service
Key Links
- Key links mentioned on this page include the following: