DrWayne. These nice images can be improved without resorting to photoshop. The blue-sky background is fooling your camera's metering system into thinking there is more ambient light which closes the aperture. Check your camera for exposure compensation. If you give it +1, possibly +2 stops, you will pick up amazing details now lost in the all black engines.
Alternatively, you can augment the foreground lighting with a bounce card. Do not use flash as this would yield glaring, uneven results. A simple piece of white posterboard, out of the frame, and aimed at your scene will allow you to pick up foreground details without washing out the blue-sky background. By curving, manipulating, or adjusting the size of the bounce card, you can even "focus" the light in specific areas.
You can see the difference a white bounce card makes even as you look in the camera viewfinder or LCD display
The sun came out a little later in the day, making it a bit better for photos.
That's useful information for anyone to know, so thanks for pointing it out.
In truth, I am aware of the exposure compensation feature, and almost always use it. Unfortunately, for some reason my camera will reset that option to zero if the camera sits untouched for more than 30 seconds or so. I've been through the manual, and there seems to be no way to override this. All of the other optional settings stay as-set until changed manually. Since I'm using the camera with an AC adapter, I leave it on while setting up the next shot, but I sometimes forget to check before shooting. wall1
I occasionally use a bounce card, especially for detail shots, although I used one a lot more when shooting with film cameras. The main reason that I don't bother most of the time is the exposure compensation works well enough. That, plus the fact that those first two shots were take from the wrong (north) side of the tracks: I semi-intentionally
built problems for photographers into the layout, like backlit subjects and buildings and telegraph poles on the viewing side. Then when a photo's crummy, I've got an excuse.
:-D
Wayne
