Sorry about the misunderstanding I jump to conclusions sometimes........
Alex
Guilford Guy wrote:yeah nothin really going on, Im going railfanning on friday though
Slow? Yeah! Where is everyone? And did I miss some, er, 'fun' with our old 'friend' hamspam549? I might as well add my post to try and cheer up the count. I am in Vancouver BC, and having, if not a blast, a good pop. Yesterday I met up with another railfan and we went to a CN/BNSF interchange. 5 trains. It wasn't bad. Pics, God willing, in two weeks. I can't stand this length of time for processing.....I am so switching to Provia or Astia and developing it at the uber-expensive place Luckily for us, we have a stand-in. The guy I was railfanning with already has a pic on rp.net....http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=155131 I was just across the crossing, taking it in telephoto. Hope you can't wait!
Anyways, while I curse the double-spacing, I'll tell you a story about my visit to the MRL. Well, I'll tell you about the visit. Since I have nothing better to do while I wait for someone who can take me somewhere where there is food.....I went down to Montana and Helena via the I-15, and camped (or tried to) NE of Helena itself. The site was horrible......coudn't get pegs in, and the wind was blowing hard enough to make the tent fly away to Oz. So after dinner, I was riding my bike around, when there suddenly came a rapid descent whereupon my mode of conveyance rapidly accelerated in an unanticipated vector.......6 stitches for Hicks! So we got a hotel....then next day went over Mullan Pass, and I still had enough railfan in me to keep my usual level of photography up. Followed a coal train over the pass, with 3 Oakway SD60s and 1 Warbonnet SD75M on the head, with 2 sets of helpers cut in. What a sight! Too bad the helpers were ACes....And I didn't see a single bloody SD45! Two nights later I was in a motel in Missoula, hearing SD45s occasionally, but never actually seeing one. I caught a few trains by the motel in the evening, and in the morning I ventured to the serivicing facility. Nice place! Not much to get in the way of pictures! Ten minutes later, I was walking across a vacant lot nearer the road than the railway (which was a good 200 feet away) when a fat security guard comes up in his shiny new pickup, and tells me that I am on MRL property. I apologise, saying that I didn't know, which was absolutely true, and went to walk on the road beside speeding cars. I then went back to the grade crossing where I was the night before, and talked to a MOW worker who said a work train was coming through in half an hour. So I went and sat down in the shade of a building on the sidewalk of main street where I had a view of the signals, and mister fat, pompous security guard tells me that I shouldn't be there. I've heard of people getting in trouble for being near the tracks, or even on public property taking pictures, but I was sitting a full hundred and fifty feet away with barely a view of the tracks, and no camera out! Naturally, I asked (still being polite like any other proper Canadian) if it wasn't public property on the town's main street in front of the shops, and since there is no way he can argue against that, he jsut said that he wasn't going to argue, and if I didn't get out of sight of the tracks he'd cite me with trespassing. Smashing. He then followed me for more than half a mile until I dodged down a pathway to get rid of the ***. Don't people like that just make your day? Eventually, I ended up a mile east of the grade crossing just in time to snap a pair of mediocre pictures of the work train. After that, nothing remarkable happened anywhere I went. Saw a bunch of BNSF in Seattle, and now I'm in Vancouver, and we get back to the top of the post. Message ends.
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/
Matt, you've seriously got to switch over to digital. No wait at all, you've got instant results when you get home. You can still get prints and slides made of some of the best shots if you want too, there are sites on the internet where you can send your photos and they'll send you slides (usually for a dollar or two a slide). I go railfanning with a guy who'd been shooting slides for 35 years, and he just switched to digital. He loves it, and says he wouldn't go back.. Man, I don't think I can even imagine waiting two weeks for photos to come back......
Sounds like you had some fun with the MRL guys. I alway just ignore jerks like that, they just enjoy ruining other people's day.
Noah
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