Way back in August 1998, I was visiting a friend in Bonn for a few days. One warm evening I took the tram across the Rhein to Bonn-Beuel bahnhof on the heavily used right bank (east bank) line.
Fast forward 17 years: Along with my friends Denis McCabe, Gerry Conmy and Stephen Hirsch, I revisited this location.
The trams still stop in front of the DB railway station, and it looks much the way I remember it.
Tracking the Light posts new material all the time.
Tracking the Light’s first full year.
It was exactly one year ago (July 19, 2012) that Tracking the Light made its debut.
In the last year this site has had nearly 24,000 visits.
Of the nearly 235 posts, the following topics have been the most popular:
1) Gallery Post 1: Sperry Train at Islandbridge Junction on August 30, 2012
2) LUAS Tram Crash on Benburb, Street Dublin September 10, 2012
3) Installment 1: Central Vermont Railway at Windsor, Vermont
4) Gallery Post 2: Looking Back on Irish Railways 1998-2003
5) Tracking the Light Extra! Breaking Views!
Among the posts that drew the least interest:
1) Sunset at Bonn, Germany, August 1998
2) Chicago & North Western Station, Chicago August 1984
As a result of my careful marketing analysis, I’ve determine the best ways for Tracking the Light to go viral are:
1) Encourage Sperry to plan a safely staged ‘derailment’ on Dublin’s LUAS route (to demonstrate the dangers of hidden rail fractures, perhaps) using former a Central Vermont Railway switcher painted in Irish Rail grey and then photograph it on a dull day using my Lumix LX-3. (Along the lines of the theatrically arranged ‘cornfield meets’ of the late Victorian era.)
2) Hire a Korean guy with sunglasses to dance around near the tracks. (Gangnam Style) —hey, with more than 1.5 Billion hits, something must be working, right??
3) Offer free Twinkies to all Tracking the Light subscribers.
4) Plan a merger with LeakyWiks.
5) Encourage everyone who enjoys the site to spread the word (and links) with their friends and urge regular visitors to subscribe! (there’s a box for comments toward the bottom of the posts and a box to tick that enables the subscription feature—admittedly this is a bit Kafkaesque, and hopefully I’ll find a better means of enabling subscriptions soon!)
Incidentally, my elaborate plans to import a German electric for demonstration were to be aborted, unfortunately Amtrak didn’t get the memo! 
Thanks again for checking Tracking the Light!
Brian Solomon
In August 1998, I was visiting a friend in Bonn, Germany. I’d wandered down the Rhein by train with a promise to return by dinner at 8 in the evening. At Mainz, I bought a ticket for an IC (Intercity) train that scheduled to arrive in Bonn that would have just barely got me back in time. However, EC (Euro City) train 8 Tiziano (Milano Centrale—Hannover) arrived on the platform six minutes ahead of the IC train. I boarded this instead (and was required to pay a 7 DM supplement for the privilege) and after being whisked up the Rhein’s left bank arrived at Bonn with a few minutes spare. I was immediately distracted by the amazing red sunset that illuminated trains heading out of the station toward Köln. I decided to wait on the IC train that I would have taken. Working with my Nikon F3T and Fuji Sensia II (100 ISO) I made a sequence of glint photos from the platforms and I over stayed my time at the railway station and so arrived a few minutes late. Not a problem: Understanding too well my predilection for low-light photography my host had anticipated my delay; she smiled, “Oh, when I saw the nice light, I assumed you’d be late.”
