Sunday railway photo fun with abandoned steam engine at Pasila railway yard

it all started with my wife noticing from commuter train's window the old steam engine, left at Pasila railway yard...

one winter Sunday - railway fun at Pasila
Originally uploaded by silpol

ModelExpo'08 railroad model weekend - it was (supposed to be) ...

... a nice show (fair) of railroad models in Messukeskus (Fair center) in Helsinki, Finland.

At least I was running for some usual show, to make some photo shooting session on personal fun (as I did back in 2007) and feel the atmosphere (though some of my colleagues call it dull and same-show-and-same-faces-all-the-time). Well, this year Model Expo 2008 (like the previous one ModelExpo 2007) has been done together with Child Fair 2008.

And that has been the very fault of organizers this year - running around kids en masse (in 2007) caused presenters to put all possible fences in most inconvenient way (in 2008), making life of photographer even worse... you can see how close you could reach with camera for macro shots in 2007 and in 2008

now you can understand...

well, I made few photos anyway so you can make your conclusions or impressions yourselves.

EU changes rules on CRS

Edward Hasbrouck in his The Practical Nomad blog has very detailed, informative, yet practical article on Europe reconsidering rules for reservation systems. While the article written in 2007, it has some interesting notions on privacy of travelers, of which many are not aware at all. He starts with explanations on what are CRS's, and what do they do. Then he goes on why were CRS's regulated and what did the regulations require. And here is interesting quote

Violation of the privacy clauses of the EU regulations is near-universal and completely ignored by the EC.

Rest of article goes on why and how are CRS regulations changing, do the European regulations matter only in Europe, what will happen next and what should be done about that. And the other nice quote

The elimination of CRS regulations in the USA, and their reduction in Canada, makes it more important than ever that the EU retain its constraints on the demonstrated propensity of global CRS companies to engage anti-consumer, anti-competitive, and privacy invasive actions

.

Edward is also author of The Practical Nomad book.

Another annual fun for modelling fans...

... coming to Helsinki - Model Expo 2008 will be held in April'08, along with other fairs - Child 08 Fair and PetExpo 08 - last year it was quite a fun...

www.flickr.com silpol's Helsinki Model Expo 2007 photoset