User:Sapfan

Gătaia train station, Romania

Former Ahníkov Palace, Czech Republic (by Antonín Lewý)

My name is Jan Pešula. I was born and have spent most of my life in Prague, Czech Republic. For the last fifteen years, I have been working as an IT specialist on SAP R/3 projects. I enjoy setting up the system (hence my user name) and in the past, I used to discuss SAP - related topics on Sapfans forum.

One of the benefits of my job is, that the same software is used globally - which has given me a chance to work in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, Guatemala and the United Kingdom for several weeks or months. At this moment, I live in Århus, Denmark, but once the current project is over, I will certainly move on again.

Another passion of mine are railroads - especially traffic control, traveling on scenic and unusual lines and history of railroad network (incl. abandoned tracks). With the economic crisis and major changes in world economy (increase of labor costs, cheaper IT, centralization and offshoring of manufacturing, decline of mining and heavy industry in Europe, reduction of governmental budgets, etc.), there are and will be many upgrades but also closures these days. It is therefore a good idea to keep a record of the current operations for the posterity on freely licenced photographs, such as these (taken by both myself and other authors).

In Wikimedia Commons, I started by contributing my own photos from different parts of the world, and linking them to articles in Wikipedia. Recently, I have been searching for, editing and placing public-domain portraits and other illustrations from digitized books and magazines (e.g., Category:Humoristické listy or Category:Zlatá Praha). Many thanks to librarians from Czech Academy of Sciences and National Library in Prague, who have made this effort possible by scanning millions of pages of old literature! You can see the results from both activities in the small selection on this page, or all of them in a gallery.

Enjoy Wikimedia, and if you want, take a look at travelogues with many pictures from Europe and Central America on my personal web site (last updated in 2007).

Galleries

Charter train tours

• Weekend with a diesel railcar in Ostrava and Karviná with KŽC, March 2014
• IBSE tour from Neustrelitz, March 2014
• Rail Wonders of Southern Sweden 2013
• Balkan Train Tour 2014 (Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo)
  • Mercia Kosovo Tour 2014 - the core of the trip above
• KŽC tour around Slovakia 2014 (Holiday with a historical railcar / Dovolená s motoráčkem)

Other trips

• Vacation in Tenerife, December 2013

Other selected pictures

• 
  Train station in Velvary, Czech Republic
• 
  San Simón (Maximón) in Zunil, Guatemala
• 
  Julius Zeyer, Czech writer (by Jan Vilímek)
• 
  Freight train in Sanarate, Guatemala