Western Railroad Discussion > More Stuff From Saturday...

CCT41 pretty well nailed the Ski Train shot from Blue Mountain Road yesterday morning. As he said, it was about 19 degrees and my handheld wind speed guage told me the winds were variable between 22 - 24 mph. Although we had blue skies, it wasn't much fun standing outside of the vehicle for very long. In addition to the Ski Train, we had some other action as well. The biggest problem was DS82 trying to line trains through Plain siding, either way. We missed a westbound coal empty as we reached Blue Mountain Road as the DS talked him by both east and west switches. We knew we had more trains coming, and the DS told one of the Signal Maintainers who was trying to keep the railroad running in really miserable weather he had three westbounds. After the Ski Train got by us (I won't bore you with another shot of the Ski Train, CCT41 pretty well nailed it), we had another coal empty come by, a manifest, and another coal empty. We then realized we had an eastbound waiting at Plain for the westbound parade, and trying to sweep ice, snow, and rocks out of the switch points at East Plain to get on the move again. Yes, photos #2 & 3 are the same train but in different locations. We drove down to the east switch at Rocky through some of the most miserable ground blizzards I've seen in a long time. It WAS exciting!

Photo #1- The first empty comes around the curve east of Blue mountain Road behind the Ski Train. The winds were still howling and we had to time the shots between gusts to be able to see the train or get a shot.

Photo #2- UP 7319 east, at the Detector at MP 22.6. He was the train stuck for the parade of westbounds as he tried to clear the switch so he could leave the siding at Plain.

Photo #3- UP 7319 rolls over the east switch at Rocky. Just enough of a pause in the wind so that the train wasn't obscured by a curtain of blowing snow.

As my partner for the morning, Norm, said, it was more like "Survival Railfanning In The Arctic!" Thanks for looking.

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lets c your ski train shots!

From the same curve as CCT41... Just east of Blue Mountain Road crossing. I was shooting at ISO 400 and I'm wondering if that didn't affect the quality of the shot. Any T.O. 'experts' have an opinion? I was shooting with a Pentax K10D with a Tamrom 28 - 200mm lens. After 2 years of shooting digital, I still have room to learn. Thanks for asking!

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Maybe you should try shooting at ISO 100 and then go up to 200. I have a Sony DSC-S500 camera with a 32mm-96mm lens on it and I mostly use ISO 100, and if the shutter speed isn't reasonable,try ISO 200 and the quality is pleasing. You should try it.

John

John Crisanti
Longmont, CO

Jim,
I made my shot at Blue Mountain with the following settings:
Lens: 80-200mm F/2.8 D
Focal Length: 185mm
Exposure Mode: Manual
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
1/400 sec - F/5
Exposure Comp.: 0 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 400

I set the camera into manual mode, and made my light readings on the hills to the right of the tracks. The only changes I made to the file was, to do an "Auto Contrast" in Photoshop and a resize. The shot up top of Blue Mountain down to Rock was made at ISO 100, which is my normal ISO setting.

Hope this helps,
John

Thanks, John. Something to try on the next photo expedition! I'll also have to try that with Photoshop as well.

I agree, Photoshop is you best bet.

John Crisanti
Longmont, CO