"Well, yes, I speak, but only long enough to say, 'Thomas Allen Kelley speaks:' "

Thomas Allen Kelley speaks:       An extraordinary kindness was extended to me in the early 1970's by a Washington gentleman who is about my dad's age, and who is a bit of a rail fan, although perhaps more of a 'nostalgia' buff. He and I used to talk about the good old days of Washington, and I would lament to him of the pity of how the railroad station was just rotting away, and it seemed inevitable that it would disappear (too bad I wasn't wrong about that...). Unbeknownst to me, he took some loose measurements of the station, and fashioned a fabulous HO-gage interpretation of the building, and surprised me with it as a gift! I've judiciously kept it safe all these years, and recently came across it while looking for something else, and was so completely floored with the craftsmanship, and time and effort that obviously went into it, that, just after I took the pictures below, I visited him and his wife at their house, and told him just how much I treasure it, even after all these years.      I had the brilliant idea to photograph the model on location, sitting on the very same cement slab that held the original structure, using the surrounding vistas to create a series of somewhat surreal images. I saw it clearly in my mind, but the resulting pictures didn't turn out quite so surreal as I envisioned them, due in varying degrees to 1- an extremely overcast sky (which eliminated any shadows, and made the images look rather one-dimensional), 2- the prescence of railroad personnel wondering what the heck this nut with a camera was doing laying on the ground, and 3- a misjudgement of the amount of time needed, and therefore I had to rush the shoot. Even so, the pics are still interesting, and #4 comes fairly close to what I had in mind, with the model in sharp focus in the foreground, and in the background, out-of-focus, is the old Washington House, which was a boarding house in the heyday of railroading. Then, attempting to achieve complete wacko juxtaposition, I even photographed the model as it sat on a nearby Conrail locomotive, which ordinarily wouldn't be any big deal, except that the engine was doing 60mph at the time!!      Thank you, Mr Oakes, for the model, and for your friendship.