have any of you been in a modular club? i was wondering if there was any thing tht you guys liked or dissliked about clubs
Mechanical Department "No no that's fine shove that 20 pound set all around the yard... those shoes aren't hell and a half to change..."
The Missabe Road: Safety First
Well, I went back over to the Relco shops in Minooka at see the Mark Twain Zephyr again. I got permission to get some close-ups of the power car. Here are the photos.
Workers finish tieing down the power car *** Joe.
The 5 car trainset now tied down to the flatcars ready to move to Granite City, IL.
Go here for my rail shots! http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?userid=9296
Building the CPR Kootenay division in N scale, blog here: http://kootenaymodelrailway.wordpress.com/
Guy guys,
Been a busy week around here, and I haven't had much time to post lately. My first post in the "new place" too. (just for the record, I think the whole idea of having to start a new thread every so often is bogus. The Admins have always used the excuse that the whole thread is loaded every time someone opens a page, and it creates more bandwith problems. From the little bit of looking into websites I've done, I know enough to know that shouldn't be true. The only page that's loaded is the page the person is looking at, not the whole thread. So it doesn't matter if you restart the thread or not, it should be the same amount on bandwidth. If the whole thread loaded as soon as you entered it, shouldn't you be able to jump from page to page with nearly zero load time? But you can't, because each individual page must be loaded. Okay, I'll get off my soap box now...)
I haven't been doing much on the railfan front, though I did get out last Saturday. I usually should be classified as a "fair weather" railfan, as for me to drive anywhere but out of town to go railfanning, it usually has to be at least a partly sunny day. I've always thought that sun just makes pictures 10 times better. But last Saturday I woke up to find that recent snow fall and covered all the little branches of the trees with a layer of snow. I decided that sun or not, I had to head for Wisconsin Dells and the CP to do some railfanning and see if I could take advantage of the trees.
I checked out a few of the usual spots, and I didn't find anything moving, nor any special locations that I'd like to shoot. So I decided to head for my favorite Bowman Rd. to sit and wait. After about a half hour of waiting I heard the dispatcher giving somebody the line up out of Portage. I wasn't positive which way he was headed, but I was pretty sure he was headed towards me (westbound). A short time later a heard CP train 288 call the Wisconsin Dells station sign headed towards Portage, eastbound (all CP trains around here have to call stations and state their next restriction. Comes in really handy for railfans). About 2 minutes later he came through, much to my happiness. I'm not 100% happy with these shots, but here goes:
At least I had one train. I was curious though about the train I thought was leaving Portage. If there really was one, he would have to meet 288 at Lewiston Siding just a few miles away. So I went back to the car to wait. About this time some light snow started falling, and I thought if it stayed it might make for a neat photo. Just a couple minutes later two trains gave each other roll-bys at Lewiston, and CP 199 called as departing Lewiston. So I walked back out to set up to shoot him. About this time the snow began to pick up. And it continued to pick up.... and pick up... and pick up, until I felt like I was standing in a blizzard. As I was standing there trying to keep the snow off my camera, I heard the rev of a couple of GEs trying to get their train up to track speed as around the corner he came. This is normally an S curve shot, and you can see the middle of the train around the far bend (linky to a good weather version). Not this time....
Kind of neat, but I hadn't been expecting to be shooting in a snow storm! With no relief to the snow insight, I decided to head for home. If it hadn't been snowing I probably would have stuck around, but I didn't know when the blizzard was going to quit, and I didn't want to wait until things got slippery and I ended up in the ditch. Not bad for a few hours on a Saturday morning!
Enjoy!
Noah
Excellent photos Noah!
Here is one more photo of the power car of the Mark Twain Zephyr. Here is a interesting thing I found out about this train. The zephyr was stored at the Joliet Arsenal for about 30 years. When BNSF bought the property it was on to build the Logistics Park Intermodal terminal (LPC), it was moved to Relco. You can really see what the effects of 40 years of neglect has done to the zephyr. It is missing all its windows, headlights and the Burlington logo on the front. A Relco employee told me that it is even worse inside. Relco never actually owned the zephyr, it was just stored there. Hopefully the new owners take better care of it and get it at least cosmetically restored similar to what was done with the Pioneer Zephyr.
Cool! I went railfanning today, and caught a 108 car train at Worcester, MA Union station heading downgrade to the Providence and Worcester yards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o82oR6cR3rU
Neat video! I've got a video I keep forgetting to put on. That EJ&E train I saw in the fog New Year's eve was moving slow so I chased it west. By here the rear of the train cleared the 10 MPH speed limit over the Des Plaines River bridge, so it was at full throttle here. Nothing like SD38-2s at full throttle with that leslie horn blaring! Just one more reason I like the EJ&E! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKydwpB3utM
Noah, welcome to snow shots. I see you got the exposure right for the second train, that's more than some people do!
Thanks for the compliments guys!
Matt, I was closer with that second shot than the others, but I still cheated a little bit with some post-processing in photoshop to brighten it up. I have the darndest time trying to shoot in cloudy whether, and it seems like most of my shots either come out dark or overexposed no matter what I try. I usually bump up the ISO, take a light reading with the camera, and then switch to manual and go a few f stops lower than what the camera reads (it always exposes too dark if I let the camera set things on it's own). Sometimes this will look fine on the little LCD screen, but then once I get the shot on the computer it's a lot darker. Often I can save them with post processing, and once and a while the shot will actually be exposed properly, but I've yet to figure out why I can't consistently get good cloudy day photos. If you've got any tips, I'd be happy to hear them....
Noah Hofrichter wrote: Guy guys,Been a busy week around here, and I haven't had much time to post lately. My first post in the "new place" too. (just for the record, I think the whole idea of having to start a new thread every so often is bogus. The Admins have always used the excuse that the whole thread is loaded every time someone opens a page, and it creates more bandwith problems. From the little bit of looking into websites I've done, I know enough to know that shouldn't be true. The only page that's loaded is the page the person is looking at, not the whole thread. So it doesn't matter if you restart the thread or not, it should be the same amount on bandwidth. If the whole thread loaded as soon as you entered it, shouldn't you be able to jump from page to page with nearly zero load time? But you can't, because each individual page must be loaded. Okay, I'll get off my soap box now...)I haven't been doing much on the railfan front, though I did get out last Saturday. I usually should be classified as a "fair weather" railfan, as for me to drive anywhere but out of town to go railfanning, it usually has to be at least a partly sunny day. I've always thought that sun just makes pictures 10 times better. But last Saturday I woke up to find that recent snow fall and covered all the little branches of the trees with a layer of snow. I decided that sun or not, I had to head for Wisconsin Dells and the CP to do some railfanning and see if I could take advantage of the trees.I checked out a few of the usual spots, and I didn't find anything moving, nor any special locations that I'd like to shoot. So I decided to head for my favorite Bowman Rd. to sit and wait. After about a half hour of waiting I heard the dispatcher giving somebody the line up out of Portage. I wasn't positive which way he was headed, but I was pretty sure he was headed towards me (westbound). A short time later a heard CP train 288 call the Wisconsin Dells station sign headed towards Portage, eastbound (all CP trains around here have to call stations and state their next restriction. Comes in really handy for railfans). About 2 minutes later he came through, much to my happiness. I'm not 100% happy with these shots, but here goes:At least I had one train. I was curious though about the train I thought was leaving Portage. If there really was one, he would have to meet 288 at Lewiston Siding just a few miles away. So I went back to the car to wait. About this time some light snow started falling, and I thought if it stayed it might make for a neat photo. Just a couple minutes later two trains gave each other roll-bys at Lewiston, and CP 199 called as departing Lewiston. So I walked back out to set up to shoot him. About this time the snow began to pick up. And it continued to pick up.... and pick up... and pick up, until I felt like I was standing in a blizzard. As I was standing there trying to keep the snow off my camera, I heard the rev of a couple of GEs trying to get their train up to track speed as around the corner he came. This is normally an S curve shot, and you can see the middle of the train around the far bend (linky to a good weather version). Not this time....Kind of neat, but I hadn't been expecting to be shooting in a snow storm! With no relief to the snow insight, I decided to head for home. If it hadn't been snowing I probably would have stuck around, but I didn't know when the blizzard was going to quit, and I didn't want to wait until things got slippery and I ended up in the ditch. Not bad for a few hours on a Saturday morning!Enjoy!Noah
WIMP!!! GO GET 4 MORE COATS AND SOME GLOVES AND KEEP SHOOTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
great pics i like the snow shots, cool efects when it snows
4 more coats? You're the wimp! I get by fine with one!!
Snowed here today, a whole bloody half inch. It's probably not going to snow again until February.
This winter SUCKS!
Noah Hofrichter wrote:Matt, I was closer with that second shot than the others, but I still cheated a little bit with some post-processing in photoshop to brighten it up.
Matt, I was closer with that second shot than the others, but I still cheated a little bit with some post-processing in photoshop to brighten it up.
That's not cheating...I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for PP! I definitely overdo it a bit though, most of my pictures are pretty fake looking.