Welcome to "Phil's Loco Photos"

Another one week visit to Israel using the very well timed flight on a Saturday from Luton with easyJet. We stayed in Tel Aviv and bought an area 150 seven day ticket covering a large area from Binyamina - Ashdod to allow for plenty of travelling in this area, a bargain at 162.50 ILS (£35), one-day tickets for north and south were 37.50 ILS (£8) so a bargain! The first day was in the north with a visit to the rail museum at Haifa and also a pre-arranged visit to the depot just north of there, plenty of interesting EMD power. We then did the new "Valley Line" from Haifa - Beit She'an, as we had a Euro 3200 on our train we waited at the end of the line for the next train back and were rewarded with a blue Prima on the blue Alsthom cars! Next day I went south to Be'er Sheva - North / University to cover the Dimona branch as has been loco hauled recently, I was therefore very disappointed to find an IC3 DMU on the line! I continued to Be'er Sheva - Center and returned north via the new line to Ashkelon via Netivot. I finished with a trip up to Natanya for some photos and chasing Prima action. Next morning an early start to go to Beit Shemesh for the only loco hauled train of the day on this section of train, thankfully the "one minute" transfer between arriving and departing was just enough time to dash from one train to another! I then made my way to Ashkelon for a long day on the road bridge north of the station, nice and busy with passenger trains but not much freight action. Next morning I returned to Ashkelon with some sunshine and then north to Binyamina for some late sunshine and a few sunny side-on photos of blue northbound trains. On the final day one last attempt to cover the Dimona, but DMU again! So back to Tel Aviv and after a trip to Hod HaSharon - Sokolov it was back to the airport and a long slow flight home to grotty Luton!