Overseas Railroads – Jim Pearson Photography

A hazy day shrouds the day as engines 217 and 255 and the rest of their trains sit in the Luxembourg main train station

A hazy day shrouds the day as engines 217 and 255 and the rest of their trains sit in the Luxembourg main train station as passengers mill about on the platforms in this 1981 photo where I changed trains on one of my many trips around Europe from 1978-1981 when I lived outside Frankfurt, West Germany.

According to Wikipedia: Luxembourg railway station is the main railway station serving Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg. It is operated by Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois, the state-owned railway company and 80,000 passengers use this station every day.

It is the hub of Luxembourg’s domestic railway network, serving as a point of call on all of Luxembourg’s railway lines. It also functions as the country’s international railway hub, with services to all the surrounding countries: Belgium, France, and Germany. Since June 2007, the LGV Est connects the station to the French TGV network.

Gornergrat-Bahn 3071 leads an uphill train from Zermatt, Switzerland with the Matterhorn in the background

Gornergrat-Bahn 3071 leads an uphill train as the Matterhorn rises above the line as the two car Cog Railway trainset heads to Bergstation at Gornergrat from Zermatt, Switzerland. Gornergrat Station is the end of the line for the Gornergrat trains and is 3,089 meters above sea level. The base station of the Gornergrat Railway is located very close to Zermatt’s train station

For a while I was the non-commissioned officer in charge of the Air Force’s Electronic Imaging Center stationed at Aviano, Italy, where Combat Camera was tasked to document the Provide Hope operation in 1992.

I was there for six months, and on most weekends, we had time off and on one of them I took a couple days of vacation and took trains from Italy to Switzerland to ride and photograph this train line. It was probably one of my most memorable trips from my railfanning past!

According to Wikipedia: Operation Provide Hope was a humanitarian operation conducted by the U.S. Air Force to provide medical equipment to former Soviet republics during their transition to capitalism. The operation was announced by Secretary of State James A. Baker, III on January 22–23, 1992 and the initial shipment of supplies was sent on February 10, 1992. Twelve US Air Force C-5 and C-141 was carrying an estimated 500 tons of bulk-food rations and medicines into Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Minsk, and Chisinau from Germany and Yerevan, Almaty, Dushanbe, Ashkhabad, Baku, Tashkent, and Bishkek from Turkey.

In total, for nearly two weeks sixty-five missions flew 2,363 short tons (2,144 t) of food and medical supplies to 24 locations in the Commonwealth of Independent States during the initial phase of operation. Much of these supplies was left over from the buildup to the Persian Gulf War.

Panoramic photo shot at the Frankfurt in Frankfurt, West Germany

An unusual site as no trains are moving in this panoramic photo shot from the end of one of the platforms at the Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof (train station) in Frankfurt, West Germany in the fall of 1985.

I lived outside of Frankfurt from 1978-1981 and went back on photo assignments for the Air Force almost every year afterwards until I retired in 1995.

The Frankfurt station was one of my favorite locations to photograph trains and on many weekends, you could find me hanging out here shooting photos. This shot was from one of my trips in 1985 and since this station is super busy with 25 mainline platforms in the station! During the time I lived in Germany is probably where I really started photographing trains as I traveled by train all the time there and had some great friends, The Grant Family, that were also into trains. We typically were off somewhere in Europe on many weekends, and I fell into a deeper love and appreciation for them during my time there.

According to The Man in Seat 61 website: Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof (usually abbreviated to Hbf = main station in German) is an impressive terminus at the center of the busy city of Frankfurt, Germany, a beautiful station dating from 1888, although the halls either side of the main hall were added in 1924

Photo was shot with a Fuji 6X17 Panoramic Camera with a 105mm lens.

The engineer on Russian Diesel locomotive 15577199 waits for permission to depart from the yards at Moscow, Russia

The engineer on Russian Diesel locomotive 15577199 waits for permission to depart from the yards at Moscow, Russia sometime during the winter months of 1992. This image is from a slide scan that I shot while I was taking part in a military humanitarian called Provide Hope.

For awhile I was the non-commissioned officer in charge of the Air Force’s Electronic Imaging Center stationed at Aviano, Italy, where Combat Camera was tasked to document the Provide Hope operation. I was there for six months, and we flew missions in and out of the USSR. This was on one trip to Moscow where we spent a couple days in the country, documenting the delivery of supplies to an orphanage. Of course, during my off time, I made sure to visit the train station that was just outside our hotel!

According to Wikipedia: Operation Provide Hope was a humanitarian operation conducted by the U.S. Air Force to provide medical equipment to former Soviet republics during their transition to capitalism. The operation was announced by Secretary of State James A. Baker, III on January 22–23, 1992 and the initial shipment of supplies was sent on February 10, 1992. Twelve US Air Force C-5 and C-141 was carrying an estimated 500 tons of bulk-food rations and medicines into Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Minsk, and Chisinau from Germany and Yerevan, Almaty, Dushanbe, Ashkhabad, Baku, Tashkent, and Bishkek from Turkey. In total, for nearly two weeks sixty-five missions flew 2,363 short tons (2,144 t) of food and medical supplies to 24 locations in the Commonwealth of Independent States during the initial phase of operation. Much of these supplies was left over from the buildup to the Persian Gulf War.

Small teams of US personnel from various government agencies (On-Site Inspection Agency, USAID, and USDA) had been placed in each destination shortly before the deliveries, to coordinate with local officials and to monitor to the best extent possible that the deliveries reached the intended recipients (i.e., orphanages, hospitals, soup kitchens, and needy families).

During WW II, Japan constructed this meter-gauge railway line from Ban Pong, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat, Burma. The line passing through the scenic Three Pagodas Pass runs for 250 miles. This is now known as the Death Railway.

The railway line was meant to transport cargo daily to India, to back up their planned attack on India. The construction was done using POWs and Asian slave laborers in unfavorable conditions. The work started in October 1942 and was completed in a year. Due to the difficult terrain, thousands of laborers lost their lives. It is believed that one life was lost for each sleeper (tie) laid in the track.

At the nearby Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, around 7,000 POWs, who sacrificed their lives in the railway construction, are buried. Another 2,000 are laid to rest at the Chungkai Cemetery.

The River Kwai Bridge became famous all over the world, when it was featured in movies and books. The cliff-hugging tracks and the natural beauty of the surrounding mountains and valleys were well captured in the David Lean movie.

This is another scan from a Fuji 6x17 film camera that I’ve shot in the past and on Saturday’s at 5pm CST I plan on highlighting some of these images and others shot on slide film, so check back then to see more images from around the world from my past travels!

Fuji 6x17, Fuji 105mm lens, other exposure information wasn’t recorded back then.

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Bridge over the River Kwai at Kanchanaburi, Thailand

The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) locomotive 3004 heads across the Bridge over the River Kwai, around 1988, as it heads to the Kanchanaburi Station on part of the original 258-mile (415-kilometer) long Thai-Burma Railway.

During WW II, Japan constructed this meter-gauge railway line from Ban Pong, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat, Burma. The line passing through the scenic Three Pagodas Pass runs for 250 miles. This is now known as the Death Railway.

The railway line was meant to transport cargo daily to India, to back up their planned attack on India. The construction was done using POWs and Asian slave laborers in unfavorable conditions. The work started in October 1942 and was completed in a year. Due to the difficult terrain, thousands of laborers lost their lives. It is believed that one life was lost for each sleeper (tie) laid in the track.

At the nearby Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, around 7,000 POWs, who sacrificed their lives in the railway construction, are buried. Another 2,000 are laid to rest at the Chungkai Cemetery.

The River Kwai Bridge became famous all over the world, when it was featured in movies and books. The cliff-hugging tracks and the natural beauty of the surrounding mountains and valleys were well captured in the David Lean movie.

This is another scan from a Fuji 6×17 film camera that I’ve shot in the past and on Saturday’s at 5pm CST I plan on highlighting some of these images and others shot on slide film, so check back then to see more images from around the world from my past travels!

Fuji 6×17, Fuji 105mm lens, other exposure information wasn’t recorded back then.

Blast From The Past – 1994 – the Gornergrat-Bahn

Blast From The Past – 1994 – Today’s photo serves a dual purpose. It’s a photo taken during my military days, but is also my daily train photo. This is a mountain rack railway called the Gornergrat-Bahn as it heads up to Gornergrat from Zermatt, Switzerland, passing the Matterhorn in the background.

It was taken during “Operation Deny Flight” which was a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operation that began on 12 April 1993 as the enforcement of a United Nations (UN) no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The United Nations and NATO later expanded the mission of the operation to include providing close air support for UN troops in Bosnia and carrying out coercive air strikes against targets in Bosnia. Twelve NATO members contributed forces to the operation and, by its end on 20 December 1995, NATO pilots had flown 100,420 sorties.

For 6-months of this operation I was the photo editor for a Combat Camera team that worked out of Aviano, Italy covering the operations. On the weekends, our schedules allowed us some time to travel and on one three day weekend I took the train from Italy to Switzerland and made this photo, along with many other images.

According to Wikipedia: The Gornergrat Railway (German: Gornergrat Bahn; GGB) is a mountain rack railway, located in the Swiss canton of Valais. It links the resort village of Zermatt, situated at 1,604 m (5,262 ft) above mean sea level, to the summit of the Gornergrat. The Gornergrat railway station is situated at an altitude of 3,089 m (10,135 ft), which makes the Gornergrat Railway the second highest railway in Europe after the Jungfrau, and the highest open-air railway of the continent. The line opened in 1898, and was the first electric rack railway to be built in Switzerland.

The Gornergrat is a starting point for many hikes, as it lies surrounded by 29 peaks rising above 4,000 m (13,123 ft) in the Alps and several glaciers, including the Gorner Glacier (which is billed as the second longest glacier in the Alps). At the end of the line on Gornergrat, the Matterhorn is visible on a clear day. It is also a popular skiing area.

Work on the railway started in 1896, five years after the Visp-Zermatt-Bahn had linked Zermatt to Visp and the Rhone Valley. The line opened on August 20, 1898, and was electrified from the start. Initially it only operated in summer, but year-round operation was extended to the lower section of the line in 1929, and to the summit in 1941.