Union Station

Photograph taken by on Friday, December 28, 2012
Post Office Pavilion Tower

Post Office Pavilion Tower

Rail Yard, Union Station

Rail Yard, Union Station

Escalator

Escalator

Cattle Chute

Cattle Chute

Dorothy, Karlee, and I went downtown today. We spent a good while in the Natural History Museum, mostly looking at sea creatures and the rocks and minerals collection. We particularly liked the fossils of crinoids and some brightly colored rocks, like rhodochrosite (MnCO3). I took some good pictures of stones but didn’t select any for today’s post.

From there we went to the American History Museum to look at their trains. Karlee is working on a photography assignment and we thought we might find some good pictures there. We took quite a few pictures and some that I like quite a bit but again, I didn’t put any of them in the post, either. You’ll just have to imagine.

On the walk back to the car I took the first of these pictures, the tower of the Post Office Pavilion on Pennsylvania Avenue. I asked if they wanted to go in and get something to eat but Dorothy wanted to eat at Union Station, which was our next stop in any case. We parked on the third level of the parking garage and took pictures of the tracks heading out to the north of the station. We tried to get some that showed motion by using a slower shutter speed so that the moving train would be blurred but Karlee’s camera didn’t give us a lot of control over shutter speed.

We went into the station and the next picture here is of the girls going down the escalator in the parking garage. If I had brought my tripod (which was in the other car) I could have blurred them a bit more as well as having the rest of the picture a bit sharper, but I like the color and the lines of this one, anyway.

We walked all through Union Station. I had been here a couple weeks ago (see White House and National Christmas Tree, December 18) so I knew my way around pretty well. There is a pretty huge food court in the bottom of Union Station and since Dorothy found out that there was a Bojangles she’s been talking about eating there. When we got there, however, she decided to have a gyro instead. I joined her in that and Karlee had a couple slices of pizza. We had a nice (late) lunch and enjoyed watching all the people.

As we were heading back to our car we looked down on a line of people moving through the cattle chutes they use to organize the chaos of boarding the trains. I love watching motion and was able to take a few photos including the last one here, showing the flow of people. Again, a tripod or bean bag would have helped but I’m pretty happy with the results. Having stood in these lines it brings back the feeling of being herded (and wanting to make mooing sounds).

We made one more stop at the Maine Street fish market, where I bought a dozen large clams and one huge octopus.

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