David Howell Travel Photography and Map Blog

Does your image of electric transportation look like a tiny light weight car that can only drive around town?

Do you imagine it powering over mountain passes and up precipitous cliffs? In the Swiss Alps transportation is provided by a network of electric trains and cablecars. They serve tourists gaping at the alpine scenery and carry supplies to small car-free mountain villages….

Dreaming about travel. Savoring travel. Remembering travel.

Decent and kind people who you don’t share a common language with. Unexpected challenges. A smile. Patience. A comfortable seat at the window on a long train ride deep into the Alps. Curiosity with rewards. Quiet narrow country roads. Wind rustling the leaves of trees along a river whose name you can’t pronounce. Sheep bells. A muddy river in spring flood flowing out of a Mexican jungle. Birds with impossible colors….

Jungfraujoch. The Top of Europe.

The Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. Three peaks at the top of the Bernese Oberland in the Swiss Alps.

The fable is that the Mönch (Monk) which is in the middle protects the Jungfrau (young woman) from the Eiger (Ogre). Mountain lore.

Jungfraujoch is a train station, observatory, and restaurant at the top of the Mönch. The entire area is served by a network of electric trains and various cable cars and tramways….

The incomparable Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Many voyages started and ended in this former railway station on the banks of the Seine. The station was the hub for the rail system serving southwest France from 1900-1939. There were 16 underground tracks with the main station, great hall, and hotel above….

Today is International Women’s Day.

It is a day to recognize and honor the importance of the work of women; their work at home and away from home. It is also a day to recognize the limitations on women’s involvement, safety, education, advancement and equal pay….

What does that have to do with this photograph in Swizterland?

How do you get groceries to a ‘car-free’ mountain village?

One way is by supply train. After the cable car.

Small villages above the sheer cliffs of the Lauterbrunnen Valley are serviced by cable cars and electric mountain trains….

How many stories? And where are they going?

How many stories have woven through old train stations like this one in Marseille, France? How many short journeys to work or school? How many romantic rendezvous, family holidays, trips to the beach, mountains, or abroad? How many of these stories have unexpectedly overlapped?

As they wait for their trains the passengers feel excitement, anxiety, stress, devotion, boredom, escape….

This is the week for the Lauberhorn Downhill in Wengen, Switzerland. Training runs have started.

That World Cup alpine ski race includes a passage through a tunnel under the Wengernalpbahn railroad line. The ski racers go much faster than this train ever does.

This photograph was taken on the train connecting Wengen and Lauterbrunnen. The couple are looking out at one of the most beautiful alpine glacial landscapes on earth….