Where oh where have we been for the last two months?

I can certainly understand the appeal of a big bag of expensive long lenses. Birds do, after all, tend to be small and far away.

I'm not about to spend $10,000 on a set of bird lenses, though. (I'm cheap, for one thing, but I'm also not quite fit enough to carry 15 kilos of glass and magnesium around all day.)

The solution? Get close. Really close. Just beyond wing-hitting range, in this case, with a 35mm f/1.8 on a DX body.

I have a soft spot for the railway.

Maybe it's the cruical role it played in creating a united Canada out of a disparate collection of territories, the sense of history, the tangible links to a past era.

Maybe it's the sheer industrial power of it- machinery built to last a lifetime, getting underway with a diesel rumble that you feel in your bones, the brutal honesty of purely functional design with few concessions to aesthetics.

Or maybe it's just the pleasure of hopping between cities with one's dignity and one's schedule intact, with space to stretch out and relax, occasionally catching a glimpse of the traffic jam on the 401 as you fly past it at a buck-thirty-five.