Thursday, November 20, 2008

Hong Kong Railway Museum

Just round the corner from the Man Mo Temple in Tai Po is the Hong Kong Railway Museum, and I had just enough time to pop in and see it before heading off for my meeting. Indeed without having spotted a taxi rank in the central square would probably have had to give it a miss.

Which would be a shame as always had a soft spot for train as form of transport. Unlike (say) coach travel, trains are fun - the children in the photo above were having a great time playing around the old coaches and balancing on the rails as they walked along the tracks.

In the modern age we have the wonderful Eurostar that whisks us from London to Paris in two and a half hours at a breath taking 186 miles per hour.

There is also a more than a little romance about train journeys. Consider how Hitchcock used trains as meeting places, from Cary Grant's encounter with Ava Marie Saint in North by Northwest to Hannay meeting Pamela on his way to the highlands of Scotland.

And that romance is no doubt the reason there was a host of wedding photos being taken in the museum while I was there. Were they real couples or a magazine shoot I'll never know but striking anyhow:

This one seemed on her own:

2 comments:

Katinka said...

These are great shots - I'm going to have to show them to my father (who is a train enthusiast). Is the girl at the bottom a wax figurine? She doesn't look quite real!

ps(Have you ever done the Canadian Rockies via rail? I'm told it's a beautiful journey)

JP said...

I'd love to do the Canadian rockies trip :)

But not with the plastic figurine: I think she used too much make-up.