Excellent photos on the thread. Very interesting, all of them. I am going to take a closer look! Here is shot from last week along the tracks of a local rail yard... under smoky skies from the wild fires across the mountains in Eastern Washington:
Some great shots here but first one is my favorite with its light, it's just magical!
In kestrel shots I'd use bit smaller exposure, they seem to be bit too light and that blank background is not very appealing. But it's hard to get anything interesting for background if sky is uniformly cloudy.
When I was child then I spent each summer about month on countryside at my relatives and one task was to bring cows back from pasture in the evening (and sometimes take them out in the morning). So I am somewhat used to such animals, but of course one has to be careful, as there have been accidents and even death caused by cows.
All that said I felt quite secure while taking pictures, as I was behind quite sturdy fence which had also couple of electic wires. And these animals were more interested in grass and wild roses than me, they spent short time sniffing lens and I scratched their head little bit, then they proceeded with eating.
I recall watching a transcontinental train going through Jasper, Alberta. We counted the wagons and did some maths... it was over 3km long. There were several locomotives along the length of the train. There were several locomotives along the length of the train, and it travelled very slowly - I guess it takes miles to stop one of these!
I guess these tanks are empty, that's allowing to have so many of them attached to locomotives. And they seem to be different from ones used here, with shape, where center seems to be lower than edges, here tanks are quite uniformly cylindrical.