Why on earth would he want you to take no pictures from that distance???

I asked, in England, if I could take a picture of the interior of the engineer's car, and was told no, but that was quite understandable as they'd just had that bombing in London...and that's why I asked first, explaining my reason for wanting one. And said to the guard that I quite understood, when he said no. Didn't try to photograph behind his back, either.

But just a picture like these is not something they can prevent, once the trains are running...it might provide a tiny bit of info to a terrorist but so would any picture of any car, bus, airplane, train.