There’s a certain thrill to having two trains approach simultaneously.
Saturday, Denis McCabe, David Hegarty and myself had selected a bridge near Mosney (mp25) on the old Great Northern Railway Dublin-Belfast line as a good place to catch Belmond’s Grand Hibernian cruise train.
The Belmond train departed Dublin Connolly behind an Irish Rail local passenger train and its progress was slowed when it encountered restrictive signals.
Another Irish Rail local was scheduled in the Dublin direction.
As it happened the two trains passed below us.
Belmont’s Grand Hibernian rolls northward at milepost 25. The lighting was tricky. Diffused backlit sun made for a complicated exposure calculation. I used a Lee .6 graduated neutral density filter to hold detail in the sky. In post processing I lightened shadow detail slightly while controlling highlights to reduce glare on the top of the locomotive.I turned quickly to make this grab shot of the Grand Hibernian meeting an Irish Rail 29000-series diesel railcar on the opposite main track. In retrospect, I think I’d could have made a more dramatic image if I’d used a telephoto lens setting.I moved over a few feet to get a better angle of the approaching railcar. The gray roofs on Belmond’s Mark3 carriages isn’t especially photogenic.
