Three Railroads in Four Days

Fantastic, love the shots inside!

 

Thanks guys!

 

What great shots. ; Thanks for sharing. ; Love those old railroads.

 

Absolutely fabulous. Talk about making the most of a great opportunity!

Erich

 

What an outing and you captured them like a pro.

 

fantastic! I loved all of these shots

 

Thanks everyone!

 

Sorry for the delay in posting the last part. ; Work has been crazy... I have a 45,000sf office building nearing completion and the contractor has needed me on site almost every day the last 3 weeks which has caused me to work a lot of overtime to keep up with my paperwork.

The WMSR portion of the trip almost didn't happen. ; The locomotive suffered a major problem with the firebox grates the weekend before that almost canceled the rest of the season for 734. ; Fortunately, a few experts got together and came up with a temporary repair that will let them run the rest of the season and give them time to make a permanent repair over the winter. ; The repairs took until late Friday to complete, but we didn't know that the charter was going to happen until Saturday evening after they made a successful test run pulling their regular excursion train to Frostburg and back. ;

So, after the night shoot at the EBT, I had a 2hr drive which put me at my hotel near Cumberland at 1:30am. ; Needless to say, the alarm clock went off way too soon Monday morning. ; We had sunny conditions early Monday morning that gave way to clouds and then to a light rain late in the day. ; Tuesday started in a heavy fog and ended sunny.

Here's a shot of Helmstetter's curve featuring Mr. Helmstetter's Farmall C tractor from Monday morning:



We did the Suicide Shot at Brush Tunnel again and this time I got the exposure correct. ; The engineer surprised us and opened the cylinder cocks as he entered the tunnel. ; Note the leaves being blown off the tunnel floor:



Some fall color at Coal Tipple:



Here's Helmstetter's Curve eastbound Tuesday morning in the fog:



Eastbound at Log Load:



Frostburg Approach:



Westbound at Sunnyside:



The light was great at Helmstetter's Tuesday afternoon, so we did several runbys before heading back to Cumberland. ; I have a good shot from the top of Cardiac Bill Price Hill, so I got one standard shot from the bottom of the hill and headed for the fence row while everyone else climbed to the top: ;







We were almost out of crew time, so we ran back to Cumberland and had just enough time for a runby in the station:



Overall, even though the weather conditions on the WMSR weren't great it was an awesome weekend and I'm really happy with the photos I got at all three railroads.