My grandson's birthday falls in March, so my wife and I traveled to Oakland to celebrate his first with his parents.  My wife flies, but I take the train, and this trip I determined to record the view from my roomette's windows.  I was fortunately on the train's north side, so could avoid sun shining on the window most of the time.  I set the camera (the relatively recently purchased Canon 5D Mark III) on tripod, 28-70mm f/2.8 lens (set mostly at 28 and 50mm), shutter at 1/2000 and f/5.6, ASA to adjust automatically, and focus at infinity.  Using the tripod eliminated the camera shake inevitably introduced by the train's motion causing the body to move, and thence the arms to move even more, often fatal to photography.  I used a remote cable release so I could evaluate the scenes flowing by without looking through the viewfinder.

Fortunately, the window was clear of water spots and relatively clean.  Train window glass is optically poor, but what can you do?  Since I was shooting modestly wide-angled photos, impact of the glass's poor quality was minimized.

I boarded in Osceola, Iowa, shortly past 8 p.m., so photography commenced only the next morning, as we left Denver.  I photographed

through the Rocky Mountains as far as Green River, Utah, then recommenced the next morning as we were pulling into Reno, continuing all the way until the mouth of the Sacramento River between Martinez and Richmond, California.

I've often remarked -- as have others -- that one sees America's backyards from the train.  They include residential, municipal, and industrial sites, and range from the pristine to the utterly chaotically cluttered.  Some photos are in B&W, others in color, depending whether some flash of color accented the scene.  I took many photos of additional, non-backyard scenes, or scenes essentially duplicative of those in this collection.  For now, those will not be posted.

 **IMPORTANT**:  I've quadrupled my images' normal size, to 1600 pixels wide, so I recommend you maximize your browser to view (F11 on PCs; Mac users read this); if you are using a monitor having fewer than 1700 pixels width, you will need to check out how to reduce window size within your browser to see the entire photos.