TransLinked Vancouver's unofficial transit community blog

Remember Roland's idea for better communication between transfer points? Quite a few weeks ago, he called me to inform me that between Main Street-Science World SkyTrain Station and Broadway Station, the female voice announcing stops had started saying something different as it approached the latter. Instead of just announcing the station, she made note of the fact that it was also a transfer point to the Millennium Line SkyTrain at Commercial Drive Station. I think this only happens on newer trains, and possibly just trains going from Waterfront Station to VCC-Clark.

Last night I spent about an hour going through photos on Flickr tagged with 'skytrain'. (At some point I'll move on to another obsession, but until then... ) Not to be mistaken with photos of the elevated light rail in Bangkok with the similar title "Skytrain" (note the miniscule 't'), only ever having taken the Vancouver system, I had gone through the photos wondering which were the best ones. The ones I liked the most fit into two categories: photos of tracks and photos of blurry trains and/or tracks as the trains were in motion, using long exposures as well as a copule of photos of empty SkyTrain cars. Here are the highlights, with people I know personally disclosed.

Blurry or Long Exposure

• SkyTrain streak from hudrednorth
• CeeBee's "SkyTrain Vancouver
• "skytrain front seat (retreating)"
• Bill Stillwell's b&w photo
• Eldon Whalen's "G-Force"
• Terry Forrest's motion blur series
• if SMeaLLuM wins the award for coolest blurry SkyTrain tracks photo, who has a just as cool underground shot and another above ground he also wins the award for most annoying capitalization
• Will Pate's "Skytrain Under the City" wins the "Hey I Know That Guy" award (Roland, easily with the most photos tagged with 'skytrain', comes in a close second
• PoYang wins best use of stationary object (in this case, a human) of a train whizzing by
• Christopher Chen's "Bombardier SkyTrain" makes the train look like a white glob
• Eastbound train at an empty-looking Main Street Station, with a westbound train at the same station
• also at Main Street-Science World is "Expedited Parallels", with Pacific Central in the background

Tracks/Guideways

• "Commercial looking up..."
• "Tracking Over" in New Westminster
• "SkyTrain Tracks" (taken near where I took the elevated guideways shot)
• hundrednorth wins the "Hey I Know That Girl" award with what looks like a tree between the tracks (the photo appears to the right as well)
• Roland's in July 2004, one of the earliest posted to Flickr, of tracks near Gilmore Station
• a photo that makes the tracks seem higher than they are
• Travis Smith's photo of a train over Commercial Drive Station
got entered in the "Hey I Know That Guy" category (he didn't win)
• Jonathan Schwartz posted multiple photos of tracks as did Stephanie (she wins the award in the "Person Other Than Me Or Roland to Have Photos Tagged With 'skyte'" category)
• two photos (1, 2) with sky between the tracks
• two more from Zoomlens (see the "Expedited Parallels" photo linked above), both involving a shopping cart: one with it as a central figure, another with it off to the side

Empty

• MK I (older SkyTrain)
• MK II (newer SkyTrain)

The award for most interesting thing done on SkyTrain (other than kissing, of course) has to be playing board games (from another perspective). Are there any photos, posted on Flickr, that I might have missed?