Great Smokey Mountain Railway Adventure

As an adolescent I have always loved and admired trains.  I can remember Florida East Coast freight trains stopping behind my grandmother's house as they waited on side tracks for another train to pass.  The rumbling, screeching, thundering noises these iron giants made were the launching pads for all sorts of adventures and fantasies during this impressionable time in my life.  To this day I still wonder if the rocks my brother and I put on the tracks to stop them could cause a derailment...NOT!!!

Anyway, when I got the opportunity to take a train ride with the Great Smokey Mountain Railway Adventure I simply couldn't resist the chance to experience the excursion and perhaps get some neat shots.  I'll have to admit that most of my photography was captured in the town of Bryson because the ride through the mountain was truly up close and personal with the vegetation along the route.  However, whenever there was a clearing in the trees or rock faces I squeezed off as many shots as was artistically creative to the eye.  Here's what I came up with both on and off the train...

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