Brain Goes Wandering
Another miscellaneous collection of stuff I've been Googling, reading, listening to
The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust is building a 50th Peppercorn Class A1 steam locomotive to enter main line service in Britain in autumn 2008.
I love steam engines in general and steam locomotives in particular. To me, the absolute coolest part of the movie version of The Polar Express was the steam locomotive. Warner Brothers based the engine on Pere Marquette Railway No. 1225, a real steam locomotive that offers rides in Owosso, Michigan.
There is absolutely nothing like watching a steam locomotive in operation, or hearing an engineer play a steam whistle. (Although the sliding-on-ice scene in Polar Express was a complete cg fantasy.) I could watch steam engine videos on YouTube allll day, but they don't capture the thunder of the engine that you get standing next to one.
When I was a very little girl, we lived next to the railroad tracks. And I do mean "next to". My parents could have thrown a stone out the window and hit the train without tossing very hard. As a baby I slept right through diesel engines rumbling by, and the three whistle crossings right nearest the house. So I guess train noises will always be comforting and not intimidating to me.
And speaking of percussive sounds, why don't I have any Evelyn Glennie CD's?
Submit your whale shark photos to the EcoOcean database >here<.
Last, a question: Why is the blogosphere (among other virtual places) full of zombies lately?
posted by Alwen | 11:00 AM
4 Comments:
I love the sound of train whistles, too; we used to be able to hear the freight trains all night when we lived in Berkeley, and I found it soothing... I kind of miss that, actually, now that we've moved. It was a sort of "two am and all's right with the world" kind of sound.
I'm also curious about the zombies.
I'll stop back later and see if you have an answer.
Because of the zombie invastion! It's coming!
We lived along a trainline when I was very small and it terrified me. One day my Dad held me down and made me watch it go by and I realised the world wasn't ending. Still didn't like it though!
Snap! My parents lived (and still do) across the road from the railway tracks and right near an intersection with the tracks and a crossroad - I used to sleep through the trains, whistles etc no problems. And during the day always used to run out the front when a train would go by and count the carriages. Now I find out that's supposed to be bad luck. Oh well...that's probably why there's an imminent zombie invasion.
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