Archive for July, 2006

From the archives: In January of 2003, a BNSF grain train derailed while going through “downtown” Lyle, Washington, creating quite a mess.

A sad structure:

Those folks over at B&H Photo in New York have never disappointed me with any service issues.  My latest tale of good service came this week.  Sunday night around 23:00 PDT I placed an order for three items, with ground shipping.

Monday morning I checked my mail around 06:30 PDT, and had a notification that my items had shipped.

That’s good service.

The Northwest has experienced its own heat wave over the last three days with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees on two occasions.  Today on my weekly trip around the Vancouver terminal my motivation to get out of the truck and photograph was low due to the fact its was over 80 degrees with >50% humidity at 9am.  I even had a chance to photograph a couple of locations I’ve never shot before, but for some reason standing out in the sun holding the camera didn’t intrigue me.  I’m sure all of you who live in places where it is regularly this warm and humid are getting a hearty laugh.  Ok, enjoy yourselves.

In place of something from Sunday I offer a photo from the weekend before GorgeRail 2006.  After changing crews at Eigth St., a northbound traverses the middle lead past the Vancouver Yard office.

On Thursday I headed to the Columbia River Gorge, and was surprised to find a nice flow of westbound traffic on the BNSF.  The weather was a little warm (105+) but the light was great.  I posted one shot from the trip already, and here are some others.

After taking care of the problem mentioned in my previous post, the H-BARVAW exits Tunnel 2 along Drano Lake:

My next shot was of a westbound train exiting Tunnel 5 which is where Highway 14 crosses the tracks in the middle of the tunnel area.  I’ve seen this shot before and it never excited me too much.  After seeing the results of my efforts I’m still decidedly unexcited:

Here, BNSF 508 west snakes around Dog Mountain, approaching Home Valley:

The lighting was really funky for this next shot, an odd combination of evening sunset light, haze, and some funky cloud shadows.  BNSF 643 west is between Cooks and Home Valley:

For a final shot, I found this location near the east end of “downtown” Stevenson and shot the M-PASVBC as it came into town.  Unfortunately I got shadow-fucked… such is life:

I’d definitely consider this one of my most successful after-work Gorge adventures.

In June I made a family vacation trip to Tucson, AZ on UP’s Sunset line.  This was my first visit so my railfanning day was primarily a scouting trip just to see the area.  I’d done some research so I had a rough idea where some of the better photography locations were. 

I headed east of Tucson where the Lordsburg sub crosses two saddles.  One of those saddles is between Tucson and Benson and the other between Benson and Manzoro.  The grades are not steep over these, but they certainly add some twists to the flat, straight desert running found west of Tucson.  I found the most photogenic part is the #2 track east of Vail, through Cienegea Creek to the summit at Mescal.  There are literally several dozen of photographable places, some requiring more effort than others.

At Empirita an eastbound stack train climbs up the #2 track to the Mescal summit.

Tonight I spent a few hours in the gorge and got several decent shots.  Here’s a teaser with the rest to be posted in the coming days.

I found this new looking-up angle from the Port of Klickitat.  This train is sitting at West Bingen.  It was stopped here for quite a while due to an open tank car hatch that was discovered on a rollby.  Since it was hot, I gave the conductor a ride to the back of the train (and back forward) for him to check it out.  He seemed grateful for the ride… it was a tad warm.  The 70.7 detector was annoucing an ambient temperature around 108 degrees at the time.

More Gorge treats to come this weekend…

A quick trip to the center today led to a stack train departing from a crew change just as I arrived. First, it comes around the curve onto the yard lead as a group of safety-vest-laden recruits walks near an adjacent track:

As the train came around the corner, I did a double-take trying to identify the second unit. And here I present the foamy picture of the day of MRL 680, an ex-NW high-hood SD45.

And that’s the train of the day…

You probably saw the announcements this morning about Adobe’s Lightroom Beta 3 for Windows.  So, what is Lightroom?  Lightroom is a workflow and editing package which is one part Photoshop, one part photo organizer, and one part import tool.  Adobe calls it a ‘project’ at this point because as they describe, the software is being ”built from the ground up by photographers, for photographers”.  According to Adobe the goal is to provide a flexible streamlined work flow adaptable for any photographer or photographic style.

As a Windows user, this is my first opportunity to get my hands on this and see what it can do for me.  I’m excited about this because from what I’ve heard from my Mac friend this software is spectacular and really improves the import functions.  My current photo editing tool is Photoshop Elements 3.0.  This software is certainly adequate for the amateur photographer and has served me well.  I’ve long been thinking about jumping to CS2, but on the average foamer budget that isn’t necessarily possible.  According to what I’ve read, Lightroom is supposed to be priced somewhere between Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.  So, if the price is right and the features are focused to photographers this could be the right thing for advancing the state of the art in my room.

If you are serious about your digital railfan photography and digital processing, go check out the 20 minute overview video on the Lightroom site and see what you think.

I’m excited to announce that a second person will now be posting here on Dogcaught. Steve Eshom is another Pacific Northwest railfan with a good photographic eye and some interesting thoughts on railroading. I’m looking forward to his participation here and have updated a few things on the site to reflect this is now a two-man effort. To see some of Steve’s past photography work, check out his gallery.

If you haven’t checked out Trainfoamers, you should.  It’s where a lot of the decent ex-Trainorders members (photobob, Don Winslow, MargaretSPfan) have gone, and it hasn’t yet been invaded by the immature teenagers that seem to be taking over RailroadForums.

The other site worth monitoring at the moment is RailroadPhotoEssays - it’s a bit slow, but the quality of the material and discussions is usually pretty good.

I saw this thread title on photo.net and was momentarily puzzed: “Good, non-SLR digital camera for my brother (around 150 pounds)”

My first thought was damn, that’s a heavy camera.  Then, as my mind realized that wasn’t what the poster meant, I thought what the hell would his brother’s weight have to do with anything?

Finally I figured out he was talking about the British unit of currency…

I made a quick trip down to the wye today to see what I could see… and what did I see? A few movements without any Dash 9s! I mentioned my camera oops already, but I did get a couple shots that made it home OK…

First… imagine this, switching with a switch engine! Instead of the usual GP30-something fare, today the BNSF 3449 was kicking cars near the yard office:

And the one road train I saw moving and shot, the M-EVEABN with some interesting power makes the curve past the passenger platform:

Today while shooting some photos at lunchtime (will be posted later) I managed to have a new camera situation come up, that being my camera blinking “Err 05″ and refusing to take a picture right as I got set for the shot.

As I now know, that’s what happens when I accidentally hit the button for the pop-up flash, but my hand is in the way so the flash can’t extend fully.  Instead of just letting me shoot without the flash, the camera blinks the error message and prevents anything else from happening until you’ve turned the camera off, turned it back on, and missed your shot.

Todd over at Trainorders is holding a contest to see who will post the first pictures of the CNW Heritage Unit.  From the rules: “The first person to post a picture showing the locomotive in its new scheme will receive a one year membership or extension.”

Let me point out that unless you already have a premium membership, you can’t post photos.

Ever wondered how to get some of those cool motion-blurred shots that look like they were taken on the road?  Go read this tutorial.

Me?  I’d be worried about bugs splattering all over my camera and glass…

How do you lower congestion on the freeways? By increasing rail capacity, of course… or at least that’s the theory being proposed in the state of Washington. Proposals are going to be made to the state legislature that state investment in increasing freight rail capacity will benefit the public both by eliminating trucks from highways, and reducing delays to passenger service.

Read more here…

I went down to the depot area today during lunch… things were fairly slow but I got a few shots.

BNSF Track Inspection car “Skagit River” has been parked on the president’s track for a few days now:

A pair of geeps was being used to switch a long cut of cars that had come up from the hill… shown here at 8th Street:

According to information on the SP 4449’s website, several break-ins have occurred in the last week at the roundhouse with over $35,000 worth of equipment stolen.

Unfortunately railfans are going to suffer because of the desires of criminals.

Supporting the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation will help ensure a permanent, secure storage facility for Portland’s railroad history.

How many more people will be killed because they can’t take the extra 5 seconds out of their life to look both ways before crossing the tracks?

Four killed in grade-crossing collison near Castle Rock, WA tonight…

This morning I headed over to Portland, my goal was to get some decnet shots of the new hybrid switchers at Albina but unless I could move either the switchers or the sun, that wasn’t going to happen.

I heard the Empire Builder #27 on the radio and got over to 9th street just in time to catch him coming into the Portland depot area:

I drove up to Willbridge but there wasn’t much going on, so I continued out to Linton for the heck of it. I pulled down Marina Road to turn around and caught sight of a train to the west. Turns out the train was just leaving to head west, so I chased it for a ways and got a few shots. This one is my favorite… the train is passing Columbia Memorial Cemetary, with lots of flowers and flags on the graves for the holiday weekend: