John from Journeys with Johnbo is the host for this week’s Lens-Artist Photo Challenge #199 and he has chosen the topic of Mechanical/Industrial.

This week’s topic has me scratching my head because as interested as I am in seeing how machine works, I’m not very interested in going to this sort of places when I need a relief from the day-to-day anxiety. Noises, especially repetitive ones, tend to make me even more anxious. Also, going to places with machine noises are generally accompanied by people and people make me anxious as they are.

However, last July, I found myself at Golden Spike National Historical Site with the family as there was a special performance of the retelling of the Golden Spike.

Both of these trains are replicas. The original trains have long gone to the graveyard for trains. Even though these are replicas, they still run on the fuel of the originals. The Jupiter – the train on the left – runs on steam power while you can probably tell from the black hole the 119 – the train on the right – runs on coal.

Trains nowadays, at least according to the one I last rode, ran on electricity. Steam and coal, those are things from the past when people were too concern about polluting the air.

As soon as I took a picture of this plane, an elderly gentleman came up to me and told me he was a mechanic who worked on this plane in 1947. Holy wow! He then went into detail about his life as a mechanic. It was an incredible tale, especially for someone like me, who finds early to mid 20th Century an absolutely fascinating period.