On my way to the Vancouver depot yesterday to meet up with Aaron and Robert I grabbed a photo of the Empire Builder Portland section crossing the Columbia River Draw.  With the nice weather we’ve had over the past few days the cloudless nights have allowed the temperature to drop giving us some nice fog around sunrise.  I’m sure those using the Columbia River for transporation don’t appreciate it, but I do as it adds a bit of mystery about what lies out of sight.

As can be the case on Sunday mornings in Vancouver train traffic was a bit slow so when an empty Rivergate grain train departed T6 the foamers converged.  The morning fog was mostly gone by this point offering some nice glint off the rails.

As Aaron and Robert headed out on the Wild Bush Chase I headed home to take care of some chores (yeah for leaves).

Got a bit of a surprise this morning while railfanning in Vancouver. Word came through the grapevine that UP 4141, the locomotive with the paint scheme for the George Bush Presidential Library, was on the QHKRV out of East Portland. A few minutes later we heard radio chatter indicating he was making a setout. Robert Scott and I decided to head south in hopes that it would be tied up in Brooklyn Yard for a bit. We found 4141 just north of Willsburg Junction, and after about an hour’s wait he finally finished his yard business and headed south. I was happy to capture a decently-lit shot of a rare unit.

Last month when a herd of railfans congregated in Centralia for a slideshow, I was in Los Angeles on a business trip. While there I got a chance to do a bit of railfanning for several hours with Jeff Bass

Our first stop was at Dolores Yard, where there just happened to be an open house / family day. We snapped a few photos including some of a couple of the UP Heritage Units on display. The lighting was only good for one of the units but since we don’t see theme often I figured I should capture them both.

Other photos to be posted in the coming days.

On my way home from Sunday railfanning at the depot I came across the South Lead switch engine at Rye Jct. making a set out for the PVJR.  Once they coupled into the two empties they decided to shove the loads and empties up the hill a couple of cars to clear the crossing.  Well, that’s easier said than done on the moderate grade heading up Burnt Bridge Creek.  After two tries and a couple of pounds of sand they finally got ‘er done.  It was a tough set out but the crew prevailed.

BNSF switcher and riding platform

Givin’ it all she’s got

I haven’t mentioned Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (LR) on Dogcaught for some time but since I get lots of questions about it I’m going to dedicate a post to it.  Much of my inspiration for this latest discussion is based on the questions I get about how LR is useful for railroad photography.  For this post I want to demonstrate how easily and effectively the features of the LR 2.1 develop module can can be quickly applied to a railroad photograph.

The Set Up

The week prior to the 6th Annual Autumn Leaf Slide Show I made a day trip on the Seattle Sub.  Thankfully it was nice sunny day and the fall colors were starting to look good.  Prior to my meeting with Robert I found myself south of Chehalis photographing the M EVEABN crawling up Napavine hill just after noon.  Here’s the straight out of the camera (SOOC) version and my focus of this example.

Edits

This image has a few issues the first of which is the fact it is slightly over exposed.   Since that is the most glaring (ha!) issue,  my first step on this image in LR is to bring down the exposure with the exposure slider.  I also didn’t care for the 8 X 12 dimension so I cropped down to 8 X 10. 

Ahh, now that’s much better.  Now the next issue is the unwanted reflection on the engineer’s window.  If any of you read Grumpy he has a special term for this which I’ll abstain from using here.  Let’s just say being glare bucked is pretty close to to what Grumpy calls it.

So what did I do to help this?  I turned to the best new feature in LR 2.x, the adjustment brush.  Using the adjustment brush I painted over the windshield and was then able to specifically control the several aspects of the selected area including the exposure, contrast, and saturation.  I ended up turning down the exposure by two more stops and decreasing the saturation to give the window a more black appearance to match the conductor’s window (the red highlight and pin are LR’s way of showing you what you’ve painted with the brush).

 

With the glaring issues addressed (dang, there I go again), I wanted to work on bringing out some of colors in the background and giving the photo a bit more contrast.  First I did a bit more highlight recovery (brings details out of highlights) by cranking it up to 22.  Next I applied clarity (local contrast enhancement) to give a bit more contrast to the details in the image (+27).  Lastly I punched up the colors a bit with Vibrance (+7).  

So the image is getting much closer now but the fall colors are lacking a bit of the glow they had visually.  This is where I turned to the tone curve.  On the tone curve I turned up the highlights to +77 and to bring out the glow on the leaves.  I also reduced the shadows to darken the less important parts of the image and add a touch more contrast.  You’ll now notice with the shadow areas darkened a bit the nose of the 4684 really stands out more prominently (this the one place you want a prominent nose :-)).

I think this image is starting to look pretty good.  I still saw some things I didn’t like around the glow on the nose so I reduced the luminance in both the reds and oranges to give the nose a bit more of a flat appearance.  The HSL (hue, saturation, luminance) controls really allow a lot of control over the colors in a photo.  I end up using them in just about every edit I do, especially those with a sky.

The last step is a bit of capture sharpening which will be applied to the full size image.  As I export the final image from LR I add in a low sharpen for the screen which is based off the capture sharpening with its masking, detail, radius, and amount  taken into consideration.  After around 5 minutes of editing I have the image on right below next to the SOOC version.

My Conclusions

When I’m asked if I think LR is better than Photoshop for developing an image I usually answer with “you can do everything in Photoshop that you can in Lightroom.  The advantage is Lightroom is designed for photographers while Photoshop is designed for everyone wishing to manipulate pixels.  This means the tools in LR are focused on the photographer’s efficiency.  Photoshop is extremely powerful but for many images, like this example, it has more capability than is needed.  This is where Lightroom’s quick, easy to use, and photographer focused development tools do the job much more efficiently.  For railfans, who are generally looking for a very natural and not over done image, the tools LR provides work very well.”   

I think the results from LR are fabulous.  As a result of the speed and ease of use I end up producing around 90% of all of my image output directly from LR making it my everyday photo tool. 

There’s much more to LR than Develop.  If you have more questions about LR, and how I use it for railroad photography feel free to drop me an email.

Despite the rain and wind over the past few days the fall colors are still holding up in places. Depending on the species and location some trees have most of their leaves while others (like the tree on the right in the attached image) have almost none. Early today the sun was out but that quickly changed to a heavy shower so my hopes of getting brilliant light on leaves faded. I instead concentrated on a scene that doesn’t require sun.

A loaded grain train dynamic brakes towards a stop at Eighth St. while passing over the mural bridge at the south edge of downtown Vancouver, WA.

What a weekend of fall colors! Maples around the Northwest were in brilliant color from the Seattle Sub to the Gorge and I was fortunate enough to be out Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. With nice weather and pretty good train traffic it was a perfect combination for some wonderful photos. Most everyone I railfanned with this weekend agreed that this is about the best they’ve seen. Let’s hope next year’s weather follows the same pattern!

BNSF’s Z CHCPTL rolls west under gorgeous scenery at Home Valley

An empty UP grain train is surrounded in fall foliage north of Castle Rock

The fall colors around Vancouver are looking good here and there. Some maple trees are in full color while others look like it is still late summer and are showing no color. This spot near Camas, WA demonstrates that well as the maple in the background has quite a mix! I found about the same thing on my Seattle sub expedition on Friday. Obviously higher elevations (like Vader, Winlock, and Napavine) have more widespread color than lower elevations. This is the Northwest so I don’t have high expectations for perfect fall colors but they are still worth a look.

This morning’s Z train runs out its last miles in the orange and yellow garnished forests of the Pacific Northwest.

I don’t know how this happened, but it’s been a year since I last railfanned the Seattle Sub. Sure I technically railfanned it while capturing images of the construction around Vancouver, but honestly since I’m still in Vancouver its not the same. I’m looking forward to the next two weeks when I’ll have two days dedicated to the sub. Hopefully the falls colors will cooperate like last year.

Just south of Wabash, WA UP’s A-GBSE 22 rolls north under fall colors

BNSF suffered a minor derailment around 3am Sunday near this photo location at Cunningham, WA. From what I read its was only a few cars of an empty grain train and track damage was fairly limited. Trains were running again Sunday afternoon.

A faster Z-CHCPTL overtakes the G-AIFVAW at Cunningham, WA

Summer in the Northwest extended all the way into October this year.  Usually there is a bit of rain in September but not this year!  We made it all the way to Thursday last week without rain but sadly it has rained ever since.  Ahhh the pleasures of living in western Washington.

Passengers wait in the early October rain for a tardy Amtrak train 500.

I took the following shots recently while walking parallel to the tracks into downtown Portland.  I had tried making the trek a few times earlier in the week and various things got in my way; from running errands to the alarm clock not going off.  After finally hitting the ground early enough I managed these shots.  One is the Amtrak Cascades approaching form the south, and the other is the same train moving north toward downtown Portland.

Amtrak Cascades CAB leading in Push Operation

 

Amtrak Cascades #500 in Push Operation

This post could also be titled “SPOPAS Before and After”…

On January 7, 1989 on my return to Pullman and the start of my final semester at WSU, I photographed BN train 613 (Spokane to Pasco manifest) tipping over the top of Providence hill. Spring forward a few years(….ahhh….19 years).  On September 13, 2008 I again found myself at Providence, this time photographing BNSF’s M-SPOPAS doing the same thing as 613 19 years earlier.  This spot was my favorite place to take a break on the drive between home and Pullman and today it stands as one of the places I still love to visit even it if is just to reminisce.

BN train 613 reaches the summit of Providence hill on January 7, 1989.

BNSF train M-SPOPAS reaches the summit of Providence hill on September 13, 2008.

On my recent visit to Eastern Washington I spent quite a bit of time around Keystone.  In case you don’t really know where Keystone is, here’s a little aid.  I’ve long wanted to spend a bit more time here with my camera.  Keystone though is in between everything and doesn’t have a freeway exit making a visit something you have to plan.  As you can see from these photos there are all sorts of photographic opportunities here.  There’s the grain elevator, cattle pens, signals, trees, rolling wheat fields, and just the vast expanse of the area.  What an interesting place to see trains!

Early on Saturday September 13, 2008 BNSF’s H-NTWPAS blows through Keystone, WA.   Besides me the cattle were the only ones to witness this scene.

The eastbound control signals at east Keystone stand watch while the sun sets on the arid plain of Eastern Washington.

This year instead of travelling outside the northwest I travelled into to Eastern Washington for a fall railfanning adventure. It ended up as Eastern Washington instead of the planned Colorado trip due to work obligations. For some reason they want me to be at work when we turn on a new computer system…go figure.

The weather over last weekend was just fabulous. The day time highs were in the 80s and sun was abundant. As you’ll see in the photos the sunsets were just gorgeous!

East of Ritzville, WA BNSF’s Lakeside sub is finally out of the coulees it has been in since Pasco. While this area appears flat from a distance the H-PASGAL shows the Keystone area isn’t flat at all!

I really enjoy grain elevators and the one at Hatton, WA is quite interesting as it is quite ‘aged’. The H-KCKPAS shown in this photo is the third westbound train to pass this location in a few minutes. Unfortunately the defect detector at MP 104 was malfunctioning so all three took well over an hour to get from this location to Connell.

Just after sunset on Saturday the Pasco East DS has west Tokio setup for the H-CSXPAS.

The 7.01 mile Flathead tunnel looks much like its older sister the 7.79 mile Cascade tunnel though there are a couple of differences.  First the grade is .5 ascending eastbound versus 1.6 ascending eastbound.  Second the speed inside is 50 mph versus 25 mph.  Because of these factors this tunnel doesn’t tend to become the bottle neck the Cascade tunnel does.  In fact trains pass between Rock Creek (west portal) and Twin Meadows (east portal) in just under 10 minutes! Eastbounds entering the tunnel don’t have the fans blowing in their face instead the door is closed which forces the locomotives into a clear column of air.   A flush is performed after each train exits the tunnel.

 

An X-VAWCIM (Vancouver, WA to Collins, MT) roars out of the east portal of the Flathead tunnel at Twin Meadows, MT.

Thanks to ObsCar I ran across an article by Jeff Brouws where he discusses railroad photography and what makes compelling railroad photography (Please read A Word on Jeff Brouws  on the page preceding Jeff’s article).  

“…it’s also important to note: when you realize everything in the railroad landscape is potential subject matter, it’s liberating and opens up pictorial possibility”  — Jeff Brouws

In the article Jeff briefly touches on some of the history of railroad photography aesthetics and offers 6 attributes that differentiate the railroad photographs of the likes of Steinheimer, Hastings, or Shaughnessy from their predecessors.

“Rail photographers of the 3/4 school were concerned with one thing: documentation, not interpretation, emotional content or aesthetics”  — Jeff Brouws

Jeff continues his discussion with examples of non-railroad photographers and their approach.  He points out that their view point was not primarily the trains but of subjects related.  Their success was based not on a compelling railroad photograph but how the photograph supported their subject and continued their story.  In fact in the discussion of Joel Sternfeld’s A Walk Along the High Line Jeff makes a strong point urging railroad photographers to look at things differently than they have because there are so many opportunities that exist.

I encourage readers of this blog to take 30 minutes and read Jeff’s article.  I believe you will come away with a fresh viewpoint about railroad photography and possibly photography in general.

http://www.rlhs.org/rlhsnews/pdfs/nl28-2.pdf 

The Great Falls subdivision is the northern half of the main line between Shelby and Laurel. At just under 100 miles it is not as long as the Laurel sub (224 miles) but packs in lots of fabulous Montana scenery. Along the way you can find scenic features such as river canyons, wheat fields, tall trestles and grain elevators. North of Ledger access becomes somewhat limited with no roads that parallel the track. This lack of roads is primarily due to the canyons used to descend to the Marias river crossing south of Naismith. The rest of the line is fairly easy to access and photograph however.

M-LAUSWE with three SD40-2s has just departed Great Falls and passes through Manchester, MT.  This area is a mix of residential and agricultural.

For my Great Falls sub railfanning I chose several locations that would work well for a northbound train in the morning. The M-LAUSWE is on duty at Great Falls around 7am and usually departs at 8am so I had to work with that schedule. Unfortunately the southbound M-SWELAU usually traverses the Great Falls sub after dark so that isn’t an option for chasing. However in the summer and fall with grain running there is a good chance for a daytime southbound empty train. Of course detours help too!

Between Vaughn and Power the track climbs up a .5% grade to get out of the Missouri river valley.  While the track speed is 49mph this train only made 25mph. 

To cross the Teton River and Muddy Creek the railroad uses two steel viaducts.  They are quite impressive since you can see them from top to bottom and from end to end unlike many of our trestles in Washington that are obscured by trees. As you drive the back roads into Collins you can begin to see them on the horizon.  They look odd because if you look towards the horizon you’d never guess there is a deep chasm to cross so seeing a steel trestle seemingly crossing a wheat field looks a bit out of place.  Once you arrive on the scene you can certainly see why they are needed.   

The location of these trestles is highly recommended for photography not only for the trestles but for the Collins grain elevator, the Collins (CIM) grain shuttle elevator, and a couple of interesting curves.  If there’s one place to visit on the Great Falls sub this is it!

 

Crossing the 2374′  long Teton River viaduct at Collins. 

If you want a wide open spaces photo there are plenty of opportunities on the Great Falls sub.  With parallel roads all you have to do is pull over to the side and point your camera at the tracks.  And then there are the canyons…

Winding through the canyon between Brady and Conrad.

North of Ledger access becomes more limited.  There are roads into Fowler and Naismith but there is not a way to chase trains through this segment.  There are a few ranch roads around but those are clearly posted no tresspassing.  

Station sign Naismith.  Don’t bother with your cell phone down here!

This will be my last post from Montana as I am packing up for a leisurely 3 day trip home.  Tonight there is a G-GVEVAW (Grove, MT to Vancouver, WA) grain train preparing to leave the shuttle elevator just down the road from Stanford.  I’m expecting the train to head north to Great Falls tonight and then on to Shelby and the Hi-Line tomorrow.  If all goes well on our trip home via Glacier Park I should see this train several times.

Thanks to maintenance of way projects on the Forsyth sub several empty coal trains from Minnesota power plants are returning to the Powder River Basin via the Great Falls and Laurel subs. This is of course fabulous for me since this will add to the normal manifest traffic. The first of the two detours that ran on Monday left Great Falls around 9am. Since most traffic out here runs in the afternoon and evening seeing a morning train was also a great surprise!

E BENBTM0 56 climbs through the canyon between Raynesford and Geyser. Don’t let anyone tell you this part of Montana is flat!

E BENBTM0 56 accelerates out of the 25 mph restriction as it passes the new elevator at Stanford

Later in the afternoon Great Falls kicked out the second detour.  At one point the dispatcher was dealing with 5 trains on the Laurel and Great Falls subs!  Needless to say he was busy issuing warrants and setting up meets.  To top it all off the track inspectors were doing heat runs!

E SPCSAM0 72 crosses Skull Creek just south of Stanford.

After negotiating a 10 mph restriction in the Winham tunnel (leaving me standing on the roof of the Yukon out in the 95 degree sun) the E SPCCAM0 72 rounds the sweeping curve into Windham.

On Wednesday another detour passed through Stanford around around 6:45am but I missed it.  No, I wasn’t sleeping, I was on the road to chase the M-LAUSWE out of Great Falls (more on that chase later) and couldn’t get a handle on its location quick enough.