Archive for February, 2010

It was nice to see some sun in Vancouver this morning!  After a week that felt more like spring than winter it was good to be able to top it off with a sunny day photograph.

Amtrak’s Empire Builder crosses the Columbia River and begins to accelerate away from the Vancouver, WA depot.

Even though I purchased Photomatix a few months ago, I hadn’t really spent much time with HDR photography. Tonight I had some time and found what I figured would be a great subject for my first attempt at tone mapping. I made this photo of the Black Hills Central Railroad on one of its tourist excursions between Keystone and Hill City, South Dakota.

I’m a bit biased, but I figure it’s not bad for a first try at tone mapping…

Two weeks from today I’ll be headed to Southern California for some spring railfanning.  Bring it on!

The Cadiz local summits Ash Hill in September ‘07.

The KCKBAR rolls through the desert between Cadiz and Danby

For several years now I’ve taken advantage of my company’s President’s Day holiday to visit the Columbia River Gorge for a bit of February railfanning.  This year I spent the day west of the west siding switch Maryhill which can be characterized as an area with lots of rock cuts and sweeping curves.  I’ve always enjoyed this location thanks to the notoriety brought to it by Dan Schwanz but just have never spent enough time here.

Just after 9am the M-TACPAS, with an SD75 leading, rounds
a curve about 1/2 mile west of west Maryhill

Generally the day was overcast.  Early on the fog hung low on the sides of the gorge but not low enough to make for interesting photographs of trains.  The sun did pop out for a while but when it was at its best (and I was set up for a great photo) the trains dried up.  During the drought I did have the pleasure of listening to the radio conversations of Mad Dog and his conductor making a pick up at Wishram.

With its rear end just clearing west Maryhill, a loaded grain
passes below the grape vines of the Maryhill Winery

Around 3pm the clouds rolled in so much that I ended up not photographing a couple of westbound trains because the scene was so flat.  Instead I prepared for a couple of night photos.  As it ends up I saw 11 trains in 11 hours.

Headed East.  Amtrak 28 sweeps through the curves on its way east to Pasco and Spokane.

Now that there are two tracks at 11th Street there is more of a chance that Amtrak patrons will get caught waiting like these 9 cars this morning.   Of course all 9 of these rigs could have saved a 26 minute wait by using the 6th Street underpass.  Maybe the city needs to invest in some new signs?

While a yard crew takes the first 3/4 of the M-PASVAW over the hill Amtrak patrons wait.  The road power
for the M-PASVAW starts moving back to its train at Eighth Street.

Bags are just part of the job…

For a few minutes on the morning of January 30th Baring, Wa was a beehive of activity. 
Three trains met here that morning so the railfans converged.

This week I had a chance to review and edit a few more images from my visit to Stevens Pass last weekend.   During the review I found a few I particularly liked because they highlighted the dark, moist, and cloudy weather we experienced all weekend.   Who says the days have to be sunny to make interesting photographs?

Blue Amtrak.  Amtrak’s Empire Builder pulls up to the east portal of the Cascade
tunnel to await the dispatcher to get an override for the flush system.

Misty Slot.  A westbound Z train plods uphill between Merritt and Berne.

Baring.  Thanks to Amtrak an eastbound Z train uses the siding at Baring
to meet a westbound stack train attempting to stay ahead of Amtrak.

Technorati Tags: train, railroad, railfan, photo, photography, blue, misty, dark, rainy, moist, BNSF

Back from the snow?  Well I wouldn’t say I was in the snow that much on Stevens Pass because west of Scenic (west portal of the Cascade tunnel) there was none.  East of the tunnel there was snow down to Peshastin.  Yikes!  I hope we have cool summer because there really isn’t anything to keep us wet through the summer.

As it ends up I took one photograph with the trees covered in snow.  On Saturday morning an eastbound Z train just happened to be across the pass while it was still cool enough out that the overnight precipitation had fallen as snow and stuck to the trees.   Thanks to the light amount of snow I was able to photograph the train at west Berne.  Normally this location is so snowed in that  getting a photo here would require snow shoes.

The next photograph of an empty grain train shows just what the entire west side of the pass looked like…green.  Normally there’s a foot or less at Foss River in January but not this year!

This year Robert, Aaron and spent more time between Leavenworth and the Chumstick tunnel than ever before.  There are a few photo locations in the Chumstick and the longer we poke around in there the more we’d like to see.  The photo below is a coal car mid-train in an east bound coal empty crossing the Chumstick Highway where the tracks head into the Chumstick tunnel.  Definitely there are a few locations here that I’ll visit again.

I’ve posted a few more of my photos on railroadforums.com in a thread containing many photos from the group of us at Tracks in the Snow.  There are some great photos in this from many of the group so I encourage everyone to hope over there and take a peek.  Ken and Greg caught a couple I particularly like.   Hopefully there will be snow next year.

Technorati Tags: train, railroad, railfan, photo, photography, bnsf, stevens pass, snow