by Steve Eshom on June 13, 2011
The Northwest is seeing its share of high water this month and fortunately the water is for the most part staying within river banks. In fact most rivers are really only high with a few at or slightly above flood stage. On Sunday I visited one my favorite spots in the north part of Clark County to see how the Lewis River was doing. It was high alright, in fact higher than I’ve ever seen it. According to the guages it is still 6′ below its flood stage so nothing to worry about there.
Here’s my photo from Sunday of Amtrak 501 crossing the river. Take note of how high the river is on the center column of the swing span and then…
…look at the second photo below of a Union Pacific manifest crossing the bridge in March of 2008. Quite the difference!
According to the flood outlook the Northwest should be OK floods wise for a bit. Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota are currently in the worst shape for floods with lots of reds and oranges indicating active flooding or imminent flooding. I’m headed to where the big red blob is in the middle of Montana in less than a month. I hope the flooding has worked its way out by then.
by Steve Eshom on June 2, 2011
I read yesterday about damage to Central Montana Railroad’s Judith River trestle. Today the images came out.
Image 1
Image 2
Certainly this damage is repairable but this railroad doesn’t have the resources of a large class 1. In fact with events over the past few years surrounding their traffic and payments from the BNSF CMR certainly doesn’t have the money for the repair. The track is owned by the state of Montana so a I’m sure they will be involved. I’m betting there will be federal money for the repair also. Stay tuned to this one as the future of the CMR hinges on the repair.
Let’s hope scenes like this joyful day of riding the Charlie Russell Chew Choo will come again….
by Steve Eshom on May 5, 2011
If you follow railfan news you know that Richard Steinheimer passed away yesterday. Of course there is sadness with death and those that knew him personally I’m sure shed tears. Me, I was very subdued when I heard the news wishing to revel in the fact he took fabulous railroad photographs than to mourn his passing.
As I write this I have a copy of A Passion For Trains open in front of me. I refer to it occasionally for inspiration, comparison, and just enjoyment. As I look through it tonight I find myself gravitating to my favorites. ”Milwaukee Road, moonlit portrait of Little Joe #77″, “D&RGW trainman drains cylinder cocks”, “C&S engine house with SD9 #838″. I love these photos. They contain a whole story within each photograph. When I view them I literally feel like I’m standing there while the photo is being taken. That’s powerful. That’s moving. That’s Steinheimer.
Those are my favorites, but honestly I have trouble turning to a page that doesn’t engage me in some way. His images have context to them and many make exceptional use of light, shadows, and textures. Together these things capture my attention and hold me in the image. I believe these are things we all strive to do in our photos. Our success level varies as did Richard’s but I think the important concept is we keep at it. Keep our passion. Keep our vision.
In honor of Richard Steinheimer and what he did for our railfan community I’m not going to post a photo tonight. Instead I encourage you to go out and find some of his images. Study them. Enjoy them. We are blessed to have them in our community and we are all better for the vision Richard has shown us.
by Steve Eshom on May 4, 2011
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been assembling my new gallery website and today I’m pleased to be rolling it out to all of you!
I decided after the first of the year that a new website was in order. The previous one, built on TTG Pages, worked just fine for me but honestly was harder to update than I wanted. Sure, the integration with Lightroom was exceptional but I had a whole list of hand fixes I had to apply after generation. That wasn’t much fun and made updates harder than necessary.
I wanted to move to the WordPress platform when I moved to TTG Pages a few years ago. At that time I felt like the photo gallery themes available just weren’t what I was looking for so I ended up steering away from WordPress. I loved WordPress though and could see that it was really the place to be. Enter RC Concepcion and his book Get Your Photography On The Web. Inside this book RC covers all sorts of topics about putting your photography on the internet including getting a host, setting up WordPress, using a theme, and many, many fine points. I was familiar with setting up WordPress sites so those parts of the book were repeats but it was the fine points that made the book really useful for me. Anyway, much of what RC suggested or demonstrated I worked into this site revision.
I find it interesting how sophisticated websites have become. My original sites where I posted photos and stories were hand coded HTML. Making new content was real work! I then graduated to Gallery2 which made adding new images really easy. Setting up the site and configuring the appearance though was not much fun. TTG Pages was another improvement in that I could do all the work in Lightroom and rebuild the site with a button click without lifting more than my index finger once…well mostly. Now I’m using WordPress which, except for a few small issues related to the theme, was a snap to set up and is absolutely a breeze to add content with.
Moving forward dogcaught.com will remain where I blog my railroad related thoughts. No changes there. As time goes on I may take advantage of the blogging capabilities on steveeshom.com to share my other work with added commentary. Right now my Flickr photostream is working just fine for getting my images out into the world though.
When you have a few minutes head on over and browse around. Remember all the images are available as prints!
by Steve Eshom on April 28, 2011
You never know where you’ll find orders. Sunday the Vancouver yardmaster decided he didn’t have time to meet the Everett-Albina crew personally so he stuffed the Union Pacific orders into the handle on the signal box. Since the rain had stopped this delivery method worked just fine.
Someday I’m betting paper orders will be a thing of the past. A quick instant message, or radio call to the UP dispatcher will have the orders sent electronically right to the locomotive. The crew can then pull them up on their standard display panel and be able to easily job brief on them. Standard electronic data interchange (EDI) protocols will ensure that any railroad’s orders will arrive on any other railroad’s locomotives and will appear correctly. A dream? Not really. The technology exists today it just hasn’t been applied yet.
I guess we have to get through PTC first though.
