A trip to the RhB for the last week of the Winter Timetable with its additional trains for skiers, snowboarders and sledgers. The continued use of a handful of the venerable Ge4/4is provided the incentive for this visit and, fortunately, the last three locos were more active than expected, covering a wide variety of workings and routes. Other classes weren't ignored but the Ge4/4is took priority.



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A handful of pictures and a brief report from the FC de Soller on the frozen Mediterranean island of Mallorca in February 2012. This remarkable line continues to operate its services using 1929 built, wooden bodied motor coaches and includes street running in downtown Palma.



go to FC de Soller gallery

go to FC de Soller report

The China photo gallery updates continue with a new gallery covering the mining railway at Pingzhuang and a major update of the Sandaoling gallery with photos from visits in 2009, 2010 and 2011.



go to Pingzhuang gallery
go to Sandaoling gallery

Two of the Jixi galleries have been updated with new photos, covering the Chengzihe and Didao mining systems in 2010. Jixi was an outstanding place for steam photography with some of the best industrial backdrops anywhere in China, attractive scenery and plenty of action.



go to Chengzihe gallery
go to Didao gallery

More updated photo galleries featuring the mining railways at Fuxin and Fushun and a completely new gallery of photos from Fula’erji.



go to Fuxin gallery
go to Fushun gallery
go to Fula’erji gallery

Two new photo galleries have been added to the China Industrials section, covering visits to the Beipiao Mining Railway in late 2010 and to Beitai Steelworks in late 2011.



go to Beipiao gallery
go to Beitai gallery

The Huanan photo gallery has been updated with many more photos from trips in winter 2009 and 2010. This narrow gauge forestry line was very difficult to photograph successfully, with frequent closures and chronically unreliable engines but it had real character. Now that it’s closed, I’m really glad that I made the effort.



go to Huanan gallery

Over the past couple of years a lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to improve the quality of the photos on Railography and to streamline the whole website production process.

Hopefully you’ll have already noticed that the more recent photos are sharper and clearer than before and that the colours are more true to life. This is the result of completely revising my photo workflow. I now use Nikon Capture NX2 to process the RAW images, meaning there’s much less to do in Photoshop. Another new tool is the PictoColor iCorrect EditLab Pro plugin for Photoshop, which makes fine tuning the colour balance much easier. RAW file to finished image usually takes less than 15 minutes now, round about what I could achieve in the darkroom many years ago.

The whole website is now produced using Rapidweaver software. It’s taken a long time to transfer everything over but it should speed up the production of pages and photo galleries while still maintaining the distinctive Railography identity. If you wondered why some pages had an orange theme while others were green, it was so I could easily tell which pages had been moved over to Rapidweaver. Now that everything has been transferred, look out for much more content appearing over the next few months while I try to reduce the backlog of material waiting to be published.

The loco lists have been updated with data from reports posted up to 21 December 2011. Lots of historic data from the 1980s has also been added. Of note during 2011 was the withdrawal of all but one of the remaining QJs, leaving only QJ 7129 at Sishui Cement Works in use until the surprising resurrection of long dead QJ 6652 for use as stationary boiler at Xi’an Bei CRH depot. There were a surprising number of new locations reported, although none come close to replacing some of the great operations lost over the past few years.

Also notable was an increase in the number of locos being preserved in one form or another. Some of the locos concerned haven’t been reported for years, if at all. Where, for instance, was RM 1247 hiding for over 30 years before it resurfaced outside the new Shenyang Railway Museum? What other gems could there be out there waiting to be discovered?

Additions to the historic lists include the first report of an active FD in the north-east, albeit as a stationary boiler at Sujiatun, a pre-production QJ in service, also at Sujiatun, SL6s at Huhehaote, RMs at Xi’an and lots of JFs, JSs and QJs.

Many thanks to all those who supplied reports, sightings, information, links to photo sites or Chinese forums etc. Without your help, the list wouldn’t have reached over 43000 entries covering 7200 locos at more than 600 locations. Keep those numbers coming.



go to Loco Lists

The German photo galleries have been updated with photos from my October trip to the Nürnberg area, featuring class 232s on freight on lines 860 and 870 to Hof and Schwandorf and electrics on line 990 in Altmühltal.



go to line 860 Nürnberg - Hof gallery
go to line 870 Hersbruck - Schwandorf gallery
go to line 990 Ingolstadt - Treuchtlingen gallery

A handful of new photos have been added to the Czech photo galleries, specifically a few shots of the Letohrad - Lichkov line after electrification and a couple of recent pics of the Brno - Jihlava line. In an effort to rationalise the structure of the galleries, some gallery and photo URLs have changed so some old links may not work.



go to Letohrad - Lichkov gallery
go to Brno - Jihlava gallery

A return visit to northern Bayern to photograph class 232 and 233 "Ludmillas" working heavy freights on the scenic, diesel-worked lines east of Nürnberg. I spent four days on the Nürnberg - Hof and Nürnberg - Schwandorf lines where they cross the Frankische Alb before heading south to Altmühltal for a day of electric passenger and freight action on the Ingolstadt - Treuchtlingen line.



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