Photo Of The Day: September 16, 2008

Train tracks are nothing more than parallel steel rails lying on railroad ties. Okay, that's a gross oversimplification. The rails are embedded in ballast to form the railroad track, and if it's not done to perfect precision, the train falls off the track. But the design is very simplistic. Yet somehow railroad tracks just draw your eye -- if they're straight, you want to look out into the distance; if they're curved, like this one in Cape Cod, they provide a beautiful design element into an otherwise ordinary scene. For more pictures of trains, planes and automobiles, visit Paul Scharff Photography.com.