Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Trains & Trolls

Oops I got distracted by the 3 whole days of lovely sunny weather that we stole from LA and have neglected to upload pictures.  It turns out that if you make a sacrifice to the weather gods, they really do listen. 

So today's post will be mostly about the two trains I saw a couple of weekends ago on my way home from Flam. The first train was called the Flam Railway and it went for 20km, some of it through the mountain, to a place called Myrdal.  Then I took a 2-hour train ride back to Bergen. That was the famous Oslo-Bergen train that some of you might recognize from Harry Potter.


First a few shots from the Flam Railway Museum that was in Flam.  In the museum, there were lots of museum-y stuff, like below.  Also some fun facts, like that most of the tunnels were excavated by hand.  And that progress was usually made at the rate of 2 meters per week.  They would have been faster except for all the troll attacks (hey I did say trolls in the title).

Special locomotive built just for the Flam railway. It had 5 different braking systems.

Some old-timey stuff

The train arrives!


Surprisingly, it is difficult to take good pictures from a moving train, but here goes...
Hey look, man-eating sheep
For some reason the only thing I can think of when I look at this is: idyllic. Probably axe murderers live there.

I think this looks cool with the trees whizzing by & I'll pretend like I did that on purpose.
Kjosfossen Waterfall: free fall of 305 feet
We actually got out of the train here, which made photographs slightly easier, especially if one leaned way over
The conductors were debating on who would get eaten by trolls first

Holding the camera out the window is not too dangerous as long as you keep ahold of the strap
Oh and probably not while going through a tunnel
Ok most of my pictures were from the Flam railway.  It moved slower, so I was able to get more pictures that turned out.  All of the ones from above were from that one.  Here is the only one that turned out remotely well on the 2nd train.

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If you want to see more of the famous Oslo-Bergen line, watch Harry Potter.  Oh I guess it's called The Bergen Railway.  Thanks Google!  And according to http://www.visitnorway.com/en/Articles/Theme/Getting-here-and-around/The-worlds-best-train-ride/ it's the world's best train ride.

Today's post has been brought to you by the letter T.

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