Tag Archives: #BNSF

photography

BNSF, Bridges and a Barge.

In June 2010, I stood atop a bluff in the Mississippi Palisades Park at Savanna, Illinois and made this photo of a westward BNSF intermodal train working west along the former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. A Mississippi River barge was working up river and in the distance is a highway bridge and beyond is the former Milwaukee Road, now operated by Canadian Pacific.

I was using a Canon EOS-3 loaded with Fujichrome Provia 100F and fitted with a 100-400mm zoom. Hazy summer light led to a predominant blue cast.

After scanning the slide to create a RAW file, I imported the photo into Adobe Lightroom where I made color and contrast corrections to result in a more natural looking and better balanced image.

Below are the uncorrected scan and the scan following post processing.

Scaled RAW scan.
Scaled corrected scan.

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photography

Metrolink at Santa Susana Pass

During my visit to California in the summer of 2016, I spent several productive days photographing trains on the former Southern Pacific Coast Line.

On the evening of August 2, 2016, a friend and I visited Santa Susana Pass railroad west of Simi Valley, where I made this telephoto view of Metrolink Train #117 led by F59PH 857. This was one of many train trainsets operating with BNSF GE diesels at one end.

Operation of BNSF AC4400CWs on Metrolink trains was a temporary safety measure while repairs/modifications were made to push-pull cab-control cars during 2016.

I exposed this view on Fuji Provia 100F using a Canon EOS 3 with 200mm f2.8 lens.

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photography, Tips and Technique

BNSF Switcher in Seattle, Washington.

On our way back from Tokyo in April 1997, my dad and I stopped over in Seattle, Washington.

Although I was in a haze of Jet lag from the long flight, we rented a car and drove around . Near the downtown, we set up to make photos of the waterfront trolley line, which at that time served Seattle. The trolley tracks were parallel to BNSF tracks. While waiting for the trolley, this BNSF switcher and caboose came by.

The switcher, according to published rosters, was a former Great Northern EMD SW1200 built in Spring 1957. So at the time of the photo, the locomotive was 40 years old. I wonder what became of it?

The slides sat in the little green Fujichrome box until this morning, when I opened it up and scanned this image.

After scanning a hi-res TIF image, I imported the file into Adobe Lightroom and made some adjustements to improve color balance, exposure and contrast.

The top image is my scaled by unadjusted scan, the bottom image reflects my adjustments.

Scaled, but unmodified scan.
Adjusted scans

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photography

Eastbound Pigs at Dawn

I like allusive titles . . . 

At 6:38am on March 15, 1997 near Sagers, Utah, photographer Mel Patrick & I were set up to photograph this Burlington Northern Santa Fe container-on-flatcar/trailer-on-flatcar train as it worked east behind a pair of former Burlington Northern SD40-2s.

I exposed this color slide on Fujichrome film using my Nikon N90S with 80-200 zoom lens. Although this image appeared in print many years ago, I opted to scan it last night using an Nikon  LS-5000 scanner for presentation here.

I find it hard to believe I made the photo more than 25 years ago!

I like the pink sky, I feel it goes well with my mixed-metaphorical Pink Floyd title reference.

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photography

Steward Depot

The wee village of Steward, Illinois is located amongst a glade of trees where the old Burlington makes a sharp bend on its westward run between Aurora and Savanna—where the line reaches the Mississippi River.

Steward is just a few miles from the busy crossing at Rochelle, where the old Burlington crosses the very busy Union Pacific former Chicago & North Western east-west line between Chicago and the Omaha/Council Bluffs gateway.

Twenty-five years ago, I’d occasionally frequent Steward to photograph trains on Burlington Northern/BNSF.

A few weeks ago on our way east, Kris and I stopped briefly in the village of Steward to photograph the preserved former Burlington station there.

This was one of the railroad’s standard pattern stations, in other words a building using a standardized floor plan that was applied to many similar structures along the company’s lines.

It appears that the building was moved both across and away from the tracks since it last had served as the company’s station building at Steward. Notice the position of the bay window on the ‘wrong’ side of the building. As built, the bay window would have been on the track-side of most station buildings.

I made these images using my Lumix LX7 digital camera.

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photography

Smoky Sunrise Caliente

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Four years ago fires in the hills around California’s Central Valley contributed to the high level of particulates in the air.

This made for a stunning smoky sunrise at the Caliente horseshoe on the former Southern Pacific crossing of the Tehachapis.

I was set up near the crossing of Cal Bodfish Road to make this backlit view of a northward BNSF intermodal, one of three, that were threading their way toward Bakersfield.

Exposed with my FujiFilm XT1 digital camera with 18-135mm Fujinon lens.

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