Western Railroad Discussion > Classic fall color scene skunked!

I had been down in the Flint Hills on the BNSF Emporia Sub in search of fall color most of the afternoon. I had some limited success here & there. But as fate would have it was looking like my last sequence of the day would yield the best shot of the day. I was all set. And then the railfan gremlins arrived...

1. Here’s the ‘coulda ~ shoulda ~ woulda’ scene. Fall color on the right. Maybe a bit past its prime, but still good. I knew a westbound stacker was coming, and all I had to do was machine-gun my D7100 through a short series of “last-shot-of-the-day” candidates. What could possibly go wrong?

2. & 3. Oops, a familiar noise from behind made me spin around to see (& shoot) BNSF 6101 scorching the rails eastbound with a genuine 70 MPH scooter. I barely had time to frame the shot and bang off a few. And you can see the approaching westbound in image #3.

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My only hope now is for that westbound to be rolling along slow enough that this eastbound hot-shot would clear the scene in time...

4. & 5. It was close, but it didn’t quite happen. Between the 70 MPH eastbound containers I did manage to get a flash of orange of the 2nd unit behind BNSF 7598. I needed the 6101 to have only 3 fewer 5-packs of containers behind it to get a clear shot of the 7598 rolling west. With fall color in the background. My “last shot of the day” would have been a good one.

6. Oh well, maybe next time... ;^)
6 photos taken west of Bazaar, KS on October 25, 2024.

Thanks for the near-miss!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Looks like you done ok to me!!
Bryan

Beautiful shots, regardless of the original plan!