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.

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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.

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Cooks Tree – One of the staples of BNSF’s line through the Columbia River gorge is garbage trains.  Most days see at least one in each direction and Day In North America was no exception. At Cooks U-ROOINB (Roosevelt-Interbay) winds through an S curve led by a former Santa Fe warbonnet.  In 2009 the power on garbage trains made a transition from solid sets of SD40-2s to BNSF’s ubiquitous Dash 9-44-CWs. 

Tunnel 3 – Railroads passing through the Columbia River gorge pass through a variety of geological features including this basalt rock tunnel east of Cooks, Washington.  For the next few miles BNSF’s M-PTLPAS (Portland-Pasco) will dive through four tunnels before arriving at the station of Hood.  The Portland-Pasco train moves manifest freight in BNSF’s Vancouver yard to Pasco for classification.

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BNSF’s S-CHCTAC climbs Stevens Pass after meeting the S-TACSTP3 at Merritt

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Aaron prepares for a photograph outside of the right of way.

As all railfans know trespassing on railroad property is not an accepted practice.  From time to time its good to have refresher about this and Joe Perry of chasingsteel.com got that refresher a few weeks ago.  Joe had the opportunity to attend a session on the role of the special agent put on by the Union Pacific in San Bernardino.  I recommend dogcaught readers take a few moments to read Joe’s summary of the presentation as I think it gives a good insight to the railroad and special agent’s point of view and offers a refresher on trespassing.

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United Harvest Elevator, Moccasin, MT

So maybe this post’s title is a bit presumptuous but in Central Montana having a multi use track in 2010 is pretty big news.  In a January 11 article, the Lewistown News-Argus (covering Central Montana like the stars!) reports that Central Montana Cooperatives is planning to build a fertilizer hub on the loop track at Moccasin (known as Grove, symbol GVE to BNSF).  The loop track is currently home to United Harvest’s elevator which loads unit grain trains throughout the year.  The two facilities will certainly make Moccasin a much busier stop on BNSF’s Laurel Sub and will increase its importance to agriculture in the area.

Coming Soon – Fertilizer

This new facility will likely improve Central Montana Cooperatives’ delivery efficiency thanks to reduced costs to ship bulk product.  Obviously lower or steady production costs will make farmers in the area quite happy. 

With all this good news I want to stop for a minute and consider the other player in the railroad game at Moccasin, the Central Montana Railroad.  They make their living on the carload business distributed to smaller communities along their line.  With the addition of the fertilizer hub what’s going to happen to them when a co-op in Geraldine decides to truck fertilizer from Moccasin because its cheaper?  CMR and the State of Montana are already in a tussle with BNSF over subsidy payments so I’m afraid that the grain shipping business already lost, the subsidy payments lost, and now the potential for the fertilizer business to be lost may not be good for the future of the CMR freight business.

Moccasin Loop

As a railfan I certainly don’t want to see the CMR lose more business and disappear.  Their line is one of the few operating pieces of the famed Milwaukee Road that still operates 30 years gone and has many scenic highlights that are hard to find anywhere else.  On top of that they host the Charlie Russell Chew Choo that is not to be missed on a visit to the region. 

The CMR aside the fertilizer hub is still good for business in Central Montana and should be looked at positively for Central Montana and Moccasin.   It may however be one straw too many for some in the region.

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A loaded Boardman bound coal train climbs Montana’s Rocky Mountains at Mullan Pass.

I heard on my way to work Friday that PGE is planning to close the Boardman Power Plant by 2020.   PGE has been under tremendous pressure from environmental groups and citizens to close the plant.  Studies of the air quality and health of down winders have brought to light issues with burning coal in eastern Oregon.  In addition PGE faced modifications to the plant to meet updated clean air requirements.  With the effort to clean up the emissions from the plant coming under increasing fire from the public, I think the combination was just too much and PGE decided to cut its losses and move on.

Once the coal plant closes that will mean the end to Boardman bound coal trains.  Generally these trains routed over BNSF from the Powder River Basin mines to Huntley, MRL to Sandpoint, BNSF to Lakeside Jct., and finally down the UP to Boardman.  I think this interesting routing along the coal cars emblazoned with a rose made the Boardman coal trains a railfan favorite.

Back for more coal

Like most railfans I will miss these trains.  On the other hand the environmental side of me is happy to see the polluting plant go.  While I’m happy to jump on the bandwagon to remove the plant, the problem I see is most people don’t realize the energy generated by the plant will still have to come from somewhere.  Just because PGE closes the plant doesn’t mean the demand drops.  It will just have to be satisfied with another source.  With that in mind I really would have preferred PGE to invest in the plant to make it cleaner (and keep the trains!) but I think they were going to be in a position where any plan that kept the plant open would have brought more attention than they really wanted.  In the end PGE’s decision was probably the best for them from a public relations perspective.  I’m curious to watch and see where the replacement energy will come from.  Will it be someplace more environmentally friendly than Boardman?

A loaded Boardman coal train slogs it out with Mullan Pass

On the positive side we still have 10 more years to chase these trains.  At least theoretically we do.  My guess is the plant will not run for 10 more years.  The plant previous had mechanical issues so my feeling is once an alternate source of electricity is located if a mechanical failure occurs that will likely spell the end of Boardman Power Plant and the associated coal trains.  Get your photos while you can.

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Cement cars cross the Fallbridge Sub diamond at the “Cannery Hole”.  These diamonds will be replaced once the Port of Vancouver finishes Phase I of the port access project.

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I met up with the train west of Eavan and found out my friend Michael “Mad Dog” Sawyer was at the throttle.  This gave me a bit more incentive to chase the train as I rarely get a chance to chase one of MD’s trains.   I was a bit repulsed by the Washington Husky hat he was sporting but got over that quickly because the light was just too nice.

West of Eavan the BAR-9 passes the rear end of an Interbay grain train changing crews at Eighth St.

After meeting the BARVAW at west Washougal, the BAR-9 storms away from the meet.

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That side note aside I ran across a non-graffitied Soo Line grain car today in Vancouver. This is of those classic 100 ton cars with the large “Soo Line” letters and a wheat stem and head. A southbound UP grain train, in which this car was entrained,  had a few bad orders to set out in the NP Pass.  This car passed by me several times during the set out.  When the air test I took a minute to capture these images as I’m certain a 29 year old grain car won’t be around forever.

Soo Line

Rubber Soled Shoes Only

Wheat

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I can see for sure that I’ve grown tired of the 3/4 wedgie as very few of my favorites fall into that category. I think I’ve finally moved past the fact the locomotive has to be the primary subject and in perfect focus. I can see that I’ve learned to look at the whole environment that makes up railroads and I’ve really started to embrace the people the make the trains go (no, I didn’t hug Mad Dog). Those observations about my current position seem like a good launching point into 2010. So here we go…

On this last day of 2009 I’d like to wish every one a Happy New Year. I’m hoping your 2010 turns out to be what you want it to be. See you track side!

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Echo, Oregon

Happy holidays everyone!  I hope all of you have an enjoyable holiday season with your friends and family. 

I want to say a big thank you for visiting dogcaught.com and commenting on our posts over the last year.  The sharing and interaction we have only improves our railfanning community.  I look forward to more in 2010 (and the rest of 2009 of course)!

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Get out of the way!

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…as seen on the Portland & Western Hillsboro switcher on Friday when the daytime high was 32 degrees.

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What influences your photographs? What is your inspiration?

After the Autumn Leaf Slideshow those were questions that lingered in my mind after seeing some fabulous photographs and presentations.  As it ends up I spent parts of the day after the slideshow with Ryan Dadgari and Scott Lothes discussing these very issues.  Did I get all the answers and secrets?  Not exactly.  What I did get from discussing  railroad photography was influence and inspiration.  Here’s a few words from the discussion that are helping drive some of my photographs.

context
environment
people
story
motion
size
purpose

That Sunday was a time for growth.  Thanks guys!

Technorati Tags: train, railroad, railfan, photo, photography, influence, inspiration

Just after this photo was taken Robert and I noted that the train was really moving as it rolled down hill from Nordeen.  We stopped just around the corner to grab another photo and as the train’s rear end went by we heard it go into emergency and smelled the unmistakable odor of brake shoes.  As the train’s FRED flashed off into the darkness of the snow storm we were not sure what the fate of the train would be.   

Our engineer friend Bryan shared many stories with us about how easy it was to get a train out of control headed east out of Kamela.   Simply not setting the brakes soon enough was more than plenty to start the recipe for disaster.  He had also shared his own personal parameters as to when it is appropriate to plug it and based on us pacing the train on the adjacent road it was right at the max speed.  Robert and I both expected the worst.

As we drove down toward Motanic we were happy to find the train stopped a mile or so after going into emergency.  The train appeared to be totally intact and on the rails.   Whew, disaster averted. 

Technorati Tags: train, railroad, railfan, photo, photography, snow, UP, union pacific, K-Line, blue mountains, oregon, kamela, motanic.

The first thing to understand is what the clouds do.  They essentially act as a diffuser for the sun and provide a much more even light over the subject and background.  Depending on the thickness of the clouds minor shadows may exist or none may be present which can open up opportunities that wouldn’t normally exist on a sunny day. 

The thickness of the clouds also regulates the brightness of the scene.  For example some of our dreary Northwest days have very little light thanks to very thick clouds which contain lots of moisture.  As a contrast east of the mountains, where more moisture is wrung out of the clouds, a high overcast will exists which lets plenty of light through providing more brightness.

High overcast in eastern Oregon provides reasonably even, diffused light on the subject.

On a cloudy day dramatic light and beautiful skies are not not something that will be in play.  These factors usually cause me to focus more intimately on the subject.  I’ll zoom more closely to eliminate an even and generic gray sky.  I find a cloudy day is a good day to focus on details as the light can be very even which allows the entire scene to be lit at the same brightness.

Thanks to even light everywhere detail photos look fabulous on cloudy days.

On the other hand the clouds can be part of the subject.  They provide an excellent top frame and when the clouds are interesting I’ll work to include them to give a sense of the day to the image.  Clouds and rain are part of our environment so including them as part of the photo is certainly something that can add impact and help explain something about the subject.   When I was a kid the BN suffered a slide on Stevens Pass and a news photographer was on scene to capture the train stopped at the slide.  In the photo the rain drops and the gray skies were both visible which just added so much more context to the mud across the tracks.

Clouds can be part of the subject to offer framing or drama.

Behind the camera I tend to make the same exposure decisions I would make on any other day to get the best exposure on the subject.  I determine what is more important about the scene and set my aperture, shutter, and ISO to match.  Since cloudy days are often darker I find myself using higher ISOs.  Generally photos exposed properly at high ISO don’t exhibit the amount of noise you see in a darker image so I don’t hesitate to head up to ISO 800 now and then (ISO 800 is the practical upper limit on my 20D).  As with any photograph, I will take a few test photos to make sure my exposure choices are appearing on the back of the camera to be what I’m looking for.

Cloudy days are a good time to practice exposing to the right.  I usually expose my images to the point where the brightest part of the scene just starts to get blown out (the red blinking areas on the image when viewing the histogram).  This usually offers the best balance of light and dark areas and gives me something to work with in post.  On cloudy days using this method will help to draw the maximum brightness out of a scene without over exposing.

Exposing to the right without blowing out highlights too much.

In Lightroom I use the same techniques as I would with any other photo.  Since the colors tend to appear more saturated in a cloudy day photo I watch very carefully how much vibrance or how deep the tone curve is I apply.  I tend to keep less contrast in a cloudy day photo to help bring out the details that are hiding in the depth of the shadows.  Since our train subjects tend to be a bit dark on cloudy days I will also use the local adjustment brush to brush in a bit of brightness or to reduce contrast on the subject.  Many times just a touch of brightness on the subject will really make it stand out from the flatness of the rest of the scene.  Clouds can also become a bit washed out with exposing to the right so I’ll use the local adjustment brush on them too to bring them back to look natural.

Judicious use of the adjustment brush on cloudy day subjects can bring them out of the darkness.  Final output is here.

Those are my thoughts on cloudy days.  As with much of photography there isn’t necessarily a formula but I find these guidelines work for me.  By all means if something moves you to do something that seems contrary because you think the product will be something special, DO IT!   Photography is about creating so step outside of the norms and capture it your way. 

Technorati Tags: train, railroad, photo, photography, lightroom, cloudy, weather, technique