Caltrain Teams Poems With Photos For Poster Exhibit

An exhibit of 10 posters is on display at two Caltrain stations presenting the joint perspective of passengers and a locomotive engineer on the love for trains.

Romancing the Rails: a Marriage of Caltrain Poems and Pictures can be seen at Caltrain’s San Francisco and San Jose terminals through August.

The posters include the three winning entrants from a love poetry contest that Caltrain conducted earlier this year, plus seven others chosen for the display. The poems, whose themes range from the romance of steam trains to vignettes about meeting a special someone on a train, are paired with the spectacular photos of Caltrain engineer Frank J. Caron.

Caron, who grew up in San Francisco, has always been fascinated by Bay Area rail history and has been recording it photographically since 1990. Caron’s photographic repertoire ranges from historic to modern rail cars, from co-workers running trains, to the view from a railroad cab.

Caron graciously made his photos available to Caltrain for the exhibit.

His work also can be viewed at his Website, railsaroundthebay.net.

The poems on display were written by contest winners Joel Katz, Rhonda Berry and Christine Ng; as well as by Kirstin Knox and Satya Kuner, whose poems were selected by a panel of judges for an honorable mention.

The other poems on display were written by Adam Gillitt, S.M. Gray, Jason Reyes, Bob Simon, and Garlynn Woodsong.

The posters are on display in the concourse area at the San Francisco station at Fourth and King streets, and along the ramp leading to the platforms at the San Jose Diridon station, located at 65 Cahill St.

6/19/06 - jrm