Why do you say the pictures will be of some interest in the next few days?

And I'm sure you will loose your appeals. Since I have no way to email you J, the rest of this post is just for you. I suggest other readers move on to the next message. Thanks. Marty

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The hardest thing about submitting to this site is that you have to stop thinking like a railfan and think only as a photographer. That's difficult. Being objective about the quality of your own pictures is very difficult. I've probably submitted over 3000 pictures that I thought were good and have had only just over 1000 accepted.

When they say "Poor Esthetic Quality: This rejection reason means that the photo is of low esthetic qualities, or is simply not the type of material we are wishing to publish," you need to remember it is their site and they have a set of criteria that they apply with good consistency. I've had dozens of pictures rejected for this reason.

The color in the first picture is a little strange, like you turned up the saturation because the shot was taken on a dull day. They are right, the second picture is soft. They are never wrong on technical issues. They must have very good software to analyze the technical aspects of a picture. Your second picture also has contrast problems (look at a brightness curve) which they would use to reject it a second time if you fixed the sharpness and resubmitted. The highlight areas (through the windows) are way over exposed so you need to bring those down a lot, which might not be possible. The interior portions are underexposed and you need to bring those up. The third slide was dirty when you scanned it (see the sky) which is easy enough to clean with the clone tool.