Fast (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

When I was a child, I regularly spend some time each year in England with my parents. During those periods of my life that I remember with great fondness as being filled with fun and adventure, we lived in Beckenham, a Kentish town that's effectively a London suburb -- and just a short train ride from central London, as I came to realize on account of my mother frequently taking me on train rides into central London (and from there on other trains that took me as far north as York or around London via the Underground).

In all likelihood, that's where my fondness for trains -- be they slow or fast -- stem. And I count myself fortunate indeed to over the years have had the experience of being on trains in countries such as Wales, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Austria, the US, Canada and Tanzania as well as England and my native Malaysia -- many of which have been really wonderful and memorable.

Still, if I had to single out the train that I've been the most thrilled to travel on, there really isn't much contest; hence my choice of which to have photographs of in this week's Photo Hunt entry. For even while I do treasure having been on the historic narrow-gauge steam train that goes along the Portmadog-Blaenau Ffestiniog rail route in Wales, I really like the shinkansen (Japanese bullet train) -- that move at a fast-pace but also provide surprisingly smooth rides while doing so -- for providing positive proof that trains have a genuinely practical part to play in the modern world.

And doesn't the shinkansen look so sleek as well? So much so that even when one actually is slowly approaching their stop at a designated railway station, they still look like they're travelling oh so very fast indeed... ;b