Hi, Asher,
It's a treat to have this B&W view of the railway yard.
A treat indeed.
What's powerful is the array of tracks converging towards the distant skyline. The foreground is in a way quite odd! Unlike the seeming order of transport aligned mechanically to the linear tracks, the near ground is undisciplined and rather chaotic.
That's an interesting, and understandable, reaction.
To me, the trackwork in the foreground is every bit as disciplined as in the mid-ground, just as an ellipse is as orderly as a straight line, or the second act opening of
La bohème as orderly in its own way as a flute solo (at least if we have a competent stage director).
This trackwork (the
ladder) is an inherent part of a marshaling yard, since we must have access between its plethora of parallel tracks, used to store or assemble strings of cars, and the few tracks of the
lead, the connection to the main line. Without this portion, the rest is just scrap iron.
Now the little truck and the puddle are something else again!
It's fascinating that this shot appears just as I take a break from some work on describing the theory of locomotive valve gear.
Perhaps someone will find a shot of a hump. At one time, humping was as important to railway marshaling operations as it is to life in D.C.
Best regards,
Doug