Archive for the 'photos' Category

For some reason there is a strong association between Christmas and trains.  Stores include trains in their holiday displays.  Many folks have a loop of track around their tree.  And, if you’re the Oregon Zoo, Christmas provides a great time to light up Washington Park and Zoo Railway’s #1 steam locomotive as part of ZooLights:

Merry Christmas to all!

Today’s forecast for Vancouver includes the threat for cold temperatures and snow. Sure enough we’ve had snow showers off and on all day and so far my high temperature has been just under 36 degrees.

So, what am I thinking about today? I’m thinking about 2.5 months ago when the temperature was just under 3 times what it is today and there wasn’t much of a risk of any sort of moisture from the sky or the river…

On a nearly 100 degree day Union Pacific’s Z-LADV-18A rolls through the remote Afton Canyon near Basin, CA

“Cap’n we’ve got a railfan dead ahead and he’s shoot’n at us!”

There’s three strong clues in the photo as to if I would actually get run over or not. Can you find them?

Railfan Ahead!

For Railroads Illustrated’s Day In North America I chose to railfan UP’s Brooklyn Sub. I’m reasonably familiar with the line north of Albany but I’d never spent any time between Albany and Eugene so part of my adventure was to learn the area. Wouldn’t you know it the day was wet and rainy, but what the heck it was October in the Northwest so out came the engineered plastic camera shields (I believe mine are Safeway brand…as in I’ll take plastic). The rain did let up a bit so I could get some photos without being soaked.

After a full day of shooting I had some night photos in mind and Salem was the perfect spot for them. Standing on the platform I was serenaded by the usual railfan radio enhanced by the live band across the street at The Ram. Ahh, Saturday night in a college town!

On October 20, 2007 Salem’s beautiful brick depot observes the passage of yet another freight as UP’s Q-PDWC rolls past at track speed.

Salem Nights

It seems on Veteran’s Day that it’s almost a bit cliche to post a picture of a relatively clean UP Building America unit with the flag, but we should pause and realize that as much as we may love a railroad, our country’s veterans have performed far more important tasks.  Take a moment to honor them on Veteran’s Day.

I shot this photo a couple weekends ago between Vader and Winlock along the Seattle Sub. This is one of the freshly-repaired Talgo trainsets in service on the Amtrak Cascades.

What’s wrong with this picture?  Perhaps the mismatched paint scheme?  With Amtrak’s region-specific paint scheme on the Cascades, they simply don’t have enough correctly-painted locomotives to cover all of the trains.  And when one (or more) is out of service for maintenance, the situation gets worse.

But who am I kidding… as a railfan I’d be out shooting it even with some grungy gray freight locomotive…

This morning I made it down trackside in Vancouver for a couple hours.  I figure since I have a new camera body I might as well break it in by taking a few railroad photos in my old stomping grounds.

This first photo is nothing special except that it’s a… it’s a… Talgo!  Long time no see!

After the Talgo left, there weren’t too many other trains but there was some decent storm light so first I shot this southbound UP stack train at the center:

 

Then I drove around and took advantage of a new angle featuring a Dash 9 in front of a downtown Vancouver landmark, the Smith Tower:

One thing that is great about this time of year is that the good sunset lighting is at a time which works well for the occasional grab shot or something that can otherwise be worked into a “typical” evening.  On Wednesday I had an appointment downtown and found myself down at the depot with a few minutes to spare.  Hence, a photo of a UP stack train crossing over:

And on that note, I’m off to explore Tacoma Rail with Adron…

With the nice early September sun shining around the depot I was able to capture some of the vibrant colors of railroading today. Both UP’s and BNSF’s (former Santa Fe) are classic paint schemes and I’m happy they were relatively clean and on the point.

Its sad that railroad corporations today don’t feel they can spend more on keeping their equipment clean. Sharp looking paint scheme’s like those found on UP 8609 and BNSF 775 deserve to be bright and shiny and not hidden under multiple layers of grime. Sadly I understand the realities of business but with railroads enjoying strong profitability I wish they could pry a couple million from the budget for more frequent washings.

Until I’m COO I guess I get what I get…

A northbound UP baretable with a new SD70 leading passes the Vancouver, WA Amtrak station

BNSF’s Everett-Albina train stops momentarily at the Vancouver station platform to pick up a Union Pacific pilot for the trip into Albina Yard.

Due to mechanical problems with the Talgo trainsets, Amtrak is using a variety of older equipment to maintain service on the Cascade Corridor between Eugene and Seattle. On Saturday, Train 516 departed Vancouver with the Cascades F59 and NPCU acting as bookends to the older silver cars.

Six years ago next month, the Red Line light rail train to the Portland Airport began operation providing a direct rail connection from the passenger terminal to downtown Portland.  Here, a train leaves the airport with a summer sunset in the background.

I see that with the substitute Cascades service that Amtrak has a new slogan. Considering the annual Amtrak funding issues the fact a train has arrived is probably worth advertising.

Promoting Successes

Union Pacific is well known for the slogans they’ve placed on their locomotives over the years. We Will Deliver… and Building America are the two most recent that come to mind. Those phrases are designed to evoke the feeling of competence about what the company does and to show that confidence around the community and customers.

I saw a locomotive slogan yesterday that cuts through all the corporate advertising and propaganda and gets down to basics about what every railroader dreams of from each trip they take on the road…

FLASH US PLEASE…and the sooner the better!

Amongst my many contacts over on Flickr are several other railfans. One of them, Patrick Dirden, was recently in Vancouver and snapped a photo of the Columbia River Drawbridge from the station platform. There are no trains in the image but he put together a wonderful composition which shows the lines of the open draw span nicely.

I’ve been down there hundreds of times, yet I don’t think I’ve ever taken this shot. Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to see something that’s been in our faces all along…

Click on the image to view it larger or check out more of Patrick’s work.

As I catalog my photos I attach the engine numbers visible in the photo for future reference. During this process if repeat engine numbers come up I usually take note and when I’m finished I search by engine number to see where I previously saw the dupes. Its a fun exercise that takes me on a trip down memory lane and sometimes proves interesting when it comes to the engines.

Case in point. During the “Hot Rail” event a couple of weeks ago I came across BNSF 1101. It has quite a storied history when it comes to the paint job. On 10/31/2000 it was involved in a rear end collision near Bellemont, AZ that moved it from and H1 paint scheme to an H2 paint scheme as the photo below from 3/3/2003 depicts.

Clearly something else has happened to is as it is now in primer. This is most likely from a more minor collision than the the Bellemont one, but certainly something to make it look well worn as it climbs Trinidad hill on 7/28/2007. So will 1101 be painted with the new logo next?

Last weekend several folks were out railfanning the Scenic and Columbia River Subdivisions and I joined them. This was my first time to the Columbia River sub (other than as an Amtrak passenger) and my first time to railfan the Scenic sub when there wasn’t snow on the ground.

Amtrak’s Empire Builder heading downgrade near Trinidad

The Everett to Spokane daily manifest works hard climbing the hill approaching Quincy

A westbound Z train pulls uphill through the “slot” near Cascade Meadows

For more photos of the event, check out the photo thread over at RailroadForums.

Despite Ridgefield South being on the edge of the wide open Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge there are just enough trees to block serious amounts of sunset light from entering the area around the plant. Still the washes of light sneaking in provided for some different photos to be made last night.

The TACPAS is the middle of three northbounds to pass through Ridgefield South over a 30 minute period

I’ve always like the brutish look of the 3 window SD60Ms. They look particularly impressive with the heat waves showing just how hard they are working as they slow for an upcoming slow order.

Yesterday morning I was sitting at work and got an instant message from Steve saying that he heard the SP&S 700 on the radio going past an approach signal at MP 769.  Since that’s about five blocks from my office, I decided it was a good time for a break and headed that way in a brisk walk.  The locomotive was onto the OPR, and unfortunately unless I was going to trespass my photo angle would be aiming southeast into the sun.  I believe the term “craptastic” applies, but hey, it’s a steam train, so I’m going to post it.

Some folks on a certain railroad photography mailing list are all up in arms about the fact that the new issue of TRAINS magazine features a streetcar on the cover.  If that bothers you, skip this post.

Last Saturday I spent a couple hours near downtown Portland taking some night photos.  Several of them involved the TriMet MAX light rail trains in the area.

First is my favorite from the evening, shot from a ramp up to the Steel Bridge with a long exposure as traffic stops and a train passes:

The following set of images were shot at the Old Town / Chinatown MAX station over a period of half an hour with a variety of platform activity and passing trains:

It was fun to shoot something a little different in the urban environment.

Around the summer solstice I find it fun to look back on winter photos as a reminder of what the weather in January was like. Whew, I’m glad summer is here.

With a skiff of snow on the ground a westbound manifest train glides into the Stevenson siding for a meet