western maryland railroad time again

so i again did the photo charter on the western maryland scenic railroad, there actually were remnants of snowfall on the ground. the attached shot is from fridays smaller charter, taken at the end of the day when one of the riders showed the organizer his shot from the morning when they backed down the csx connector track and made the run over the canal area. the charter leader liked it so much he repeated the runby as the closer friday i'll be posting some more over the next few days as i process.

 

Love that reflection! ; Looking forward to seeing more!


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friday morning coming into the station to pick us up





and the first runby of the day

 

Very nice. Great composition and color. Looks like a neat adventure. ;

 

Nice Gary! ; You may know, or I am sure Michael does, but why is the smoke/steam white in the first and black in the second?

 

michael correct me if i'm wrong, but the black smoke is coal dust igniting as more coal is fed onto the fire

 

Dennis is correct, with the exception of when a locomotive is just starting up and when sanding the flues of an oil burner, black smoke is a sign of a poor job of firing the locomotive. ; During the steam era, firemen took great pride in firing with a clean stack which meant very little smoke on a warm day or a white plume of steam on a cold day. ; The black smoke is actually unburnt coal which is both dirty and wasteful.

Nice shots, Gary. ; The reflection turned out nice.

 

Thanks for the explainations guys!

 

thanks michael, kevin's am shot was better, but that was the time of day and that early eastern sun. one of the difficulties with this type of photo trip is i feel it takes a couple of trips to get a feel for the locations. i actually took some notes on the locations and have started to add to those notes as i process, such as maybe try the other side of the tracks at a couple of places, maybe go lower with the tripod, something i started doing this year.
helmstetters in the fog, morning. not sure if i still like this shot as much as i did on the camera screen, if i ever get a do over i think i would go auto iso and run noise reduction if the camera went higher iso than i want. it's a little more abstract and less detailed than i usually go for





same location, a few minutes later

 

I like that first one Gary. ; It is great how the steam starts on the left of the frame, yet is heading back to the left.

 

i could be wrong, but if my notes are at least somewhat close this is a location called west helmstetters, the photo time falls about right for when we would have been at that location, and thanks to karens christmas generosity, my new hot shoe mount gps unit for the 5dmk3 that embeds the gps into the file. the map function of lightroom places me there





and no doubt about this one, i'm standing above the east portal of brush tunnel, and no i elected not to do this years in tunnel shot, i just the monday before listened to guests at our monthly dept meeting talking about the fire fighters cancer support network, remembering when as soon as we put the wet stuff on the red stuff we would take of the mask for overhaul
no thanks, no smoke for me this year

 

this one i'm not sure, i think it's tie pile, although my notes indicate photos taken there about 12 minutes later





i think this one is called coal tipple

 

You're correct on all the locations, Gary. ; I like the East Portal shot. ; I'll have to remember to shoot up there next time its cloudy.

 

More great stuff Gary! ; I need to look into one of these, sound like fun and great opportunity to shoot trains.

 

enroute from coal tipple to the next location, the crew said we could ride in the caboose if we wanted so i was able to hop up in and score one of the cupola brakemans seats. the window wasn't too dirty and i was able to shoot around the wiper blade stuck partway over on the left.one of the firemen is up on top of the coal pile shoveling some down lower to make it easier on the person firing. this is very much a view that the brakeman would have had back in the day.





and no doubt about this location, C&P bridge #2. for some reason i have a warm feeling for this shot, maybe it's because it's a nice view, and the drivers are in the shot, and the snow does add to the scene here i feel

 

They are a lot of fun. ; If you're interested in attending one, let me know. ; The biggest problem you're going to have is finding one on a weekend since they tend to run on a Thursday/Friday or a Monday/Tuesday to avoid the regular tourist trains that run on the weekends.

 

I just started processing my shots last night. ; Hopefully I'll have them all done by the end of the weekend. ; I attended Saturday and Sunday of the charter but opted to skip Friday to save vacation days for later in the year. ; Here's the first runby of the morning on Saturday:

City Junction on a cloudy & foggy morning:



We had the train facing Eastbound on Sunday which isn't usually done because the track is almost all downhill heading East. ; We also had a ton of fog that morning which made for some neat photography opportunities. ; Here's two shots of the train at the curve just East of Bone Cave:





Here's the traditional Brush Tunnel East Portal shot from Saturday: ;

 

The YouTube link didn't work the first time, so lets try this again...

For the railfans in the group, I opted to see how long I could hold my breath and stayed in the tunnel to catch the high speed runby on my iPhone. ; Watch for the red hot coals that appear just after the smoke cloud fills the tunnel:

[youtube]9YX3lW6gSg4[/youtube]

 

That video is crazy, probably enough to make me NOT go in there for the runby. ; Very cool shots as well. ;

Are any of these run in the summer?