Have to agree with you there Matt - I expected a flood of top quality entries and was slightly dissapointed with what we got.
I have to say though that railway photography ( good quality photography that is ) is notoriously difficult due to many reasons - our unsettled weather for one.I have been taking all types of pictures for over 40 years - portraits,weddings,sports,industrial ( my personal favourite as you control pretty much everything ) and lots of others but I still find railways the most difficult.
I had hoped that the introduction of digital photography would help improve the standard of peoples pictures but sadly that does not seem to be the case,as the plethora of railway fotopic sites proves.
Having said that,at the risk of repeating myself,what I love about this competition is the fact that someones camera phone picture could trash one taken with a high quality DSLR - long may that be the case.