Author Archives: Paul Rennie

The railway invented the modern time system…and here, 200 years later, is the new digital time display at London Bridge. An app is planned to allow smartwatch wearers to download the clock face for their own wrists. Here is a … Continue reading →

This was the stand-out display this year…a post-industrial fantasy, Mad Max style!

This photo is of the rail-head and pier, at the docks in Oakland, California. Nowadays, Oakland is one of the largest Pacific-facing ports in the US. Oakland does a bot of heavy-lifting for Los Angeles, and the Bay area. The … Continue reading →

This is a lovely small impressionist style painting, in open air, of a suburban railway station. There are many famous paintings of the railway, by Monet and Pissarro especially. In this painting, I especially like the architectural detail of the … Continue reading →

This picture of a steam loco, on the ceinture line in Paris, reminds us that steam trains in cities produce lots of mess – soot and steam especially. Not surprisingly, most of the areas around the railways tracks were either … Continue reading →

I like the look of that! The ceinture was a line built to go around Paris, so as to make journeys across the city easier, especially as the city expanded rapidly at the beginning of the 20C.

I love the shape of this tank engine, for local suburban services around Paris…a sort of ideal form for this type of engine. So-called because the water tanks flank the boiler.