Railfan Goofs- what have you done?

[Harrison]

Today I went to shoot a train in the first snow of the year today, and as the train was pulling out the card became full. I had just cleaned out the card this morning, and it turns out I put the wrong card in the camera. I did manage to get some shots. You can see them here.

So my question is- What goofs have you done railfanning? Here are some of mine:

• Card Full
• No card
• Dead Battery
• Forgot Battery
• Missed Train
• Lense Cap on

I am sure there are more, please share.

[Semper Vaporo]

I went to watch a steam locomotive... the 1st in many years to get to this area, and I made the mistake of taking my camera with me... I only got to see the train through the viewfinder... may as well of just looked at photos on-line and saved myself the hassle of the unruly crowds.

[tree68]

More than just railfanning involved - went on a trip this past summer, got about four hours from home and realized I'd left the DSLR and all of its accesories sitting on the kitchen counter...

On the other hand, I ended up picking up a GoPro as a result, which comes in handy from time to time.

[Firelock76]

Nice shots Harrison!  And where is that wonderful old station?

Railfan goofs?  Honestly, it's not what I did do as much as what I (we) didn't do.

When we moved to Virginia in 1987 the Norfolk-Southern steam program was in full bloom.  We saw the excursion adds in the local paper but passed on them as we thought they were too expensive.  My brother-in-law "Big B" happened to see one of the ads when he was here for a visit and said they were very reasonable indeed so we took his advice and started riding and kept riding until the program ended in 1994.

Wish we had started sooner!  1218, 611, great engines and great rides!

[seppburgh2]

Back in the film days my best camera in 35mm was an Argus 4 (AKA The Brick.) Once a mouth on Sunday me and my railfans buddies would drive to a junction on the former PC main (it was around, Newark NJ right off a highway exit) to shoot the Tropican train and anything else would come along.  We, this day a switcher (Alco S1 more or less) was there and the crew invited us all up for a look around.  I asked if my buddy could take a picture of me taking a classic pose out the right side window, np snap. OK after thanks the switcher moved on.  No sooner the it left hear comes a GG1 running light and at track speed!  Just had enought time to raise the view finder to eye and click for a going away shut.  Well, after I go home and develope the film (it was B&W film) here is my on the S1 and transpose is the GG1 going by! My buddy had forgotten to advanced the film resulting in an amazing double exposure.  The Brick film advance method was to unlocking the winder (push a knob) and cranking the winder until it stops.  I was really upset at the time thinking I'll never be in a cap again.  Or catch a GG1 along and moving at 60+.  Happen ending though, a few years latter I was applying to the NJ School of Architecture as a professional student and used that "self-protriate" on my portfillo cover.  Explaining how traveling makes the soul fly.  End of story.  Was accepted to the school, but Carter's ression kicked in and there wasn't going to be work about the time I graduated.  So now 38+ years in IT many as a Project Manger building software instead of houses.  Don't know where that bad shot will take you.

[Ulrich]

Nothing involving a camera over here... many years ago I was caught trespassing.. not on the actual tracks though.. railroad police were polite and told me to leave the property, which I did.  

[54light15]

When I first went to the U.K. years ago and started visiting heritage railways, I should have bought the book by Ian Allen publishing listing every steam locomotive, operating or not in the whole country. There was a space for writing where you saw a particular engine and the date you saw it and whether or not it was in operation. I wish I did that. 

[Overmod]

Harrison

So my question is- What goofs have you done railfanning? Here are some of mine: Card Full No card Dead Battery Forgot Battery Missed Train Lens Cap on

Some of the other camera settings, then and now, could be jiggered 'inappropriately'.  One of these was (either through the wrong 'automatic' setting or using the wrong priority) having the shutter speed too long, or the aperture too far open for the desired depth of field.  Some of this could theoretically be corrected by 'pulling' the resulting film in development, but you then ran the risk of driving around, perhaps for years, with the film in your (often overheated!) glove compartment, waiting to get to a lab that knew the secret lore of doing this for color process film.  Somewhere I STILL have the last roll of film I took of PC Baldwins; I kept waiting a bit for the state of the art in recovery to improve ... and waiting a bit longer ... I doubt even the best of film magicians could recover all the image data from it now.

The camera 'goof' I seem most prone to now is getting the wretched thing to stay in the right shooting mode.  This is especially true of crApple phone cameras on any version of iOS Camera, where inadvertently selecting 'Video' instead of 'Photo' will result in an amazing series of ground shots or the inside of pockets, interspersed with vanishingly slight glimpses of trains or whatnot, usually discovered only after a whole sequence has been 'shot' (there's a double entendre now, isn't there?)

We should also look carefully at the comical aspects of railfanning that need not involve not-documented-not-done.  I can still distinctly remember the first steam fantrip I went on, with 2102.  At one point we were set up to watch from a bridge, in a nice clear spot over the tracks that unaccountably had no photo line.  Closer and closer came the towering exhaust, until I began to wonder how closely it would miss me. 

It did not.