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NI Railways—Vistas from Downhill Demesne.

The weather was rapidly changing when we walked across the grassy plateau of the Downhill Demesne located west of Castlerock, Northern Ireland.

Although it was bright and sunny, we could see dark clouds over the Foyle estuary to the west.

NI Railways operates an hourly service between Belfast and Derry, and one of our objectives was to capture views of these trains running along the coast. For my money, some of the finest views of trains in Ireland can be made from this plateau. The fee is putting up with the weather.

We timed our arrival well. A Derry bound train passed just a few minutes after we found a suitable overlook. Minutes later dark clouds obscured the sun, the wind kicked up and soon we were pelted with hail and soaked with icy rain. Before the eastward train to Belfast came into view the sky started to clear.

This pattern repeated itself about an hour later. Such is the price of getting great scenic photos of NI Railways!

Nikon Z7-II photo from the Downhill Demesne.
Trailing view: Lumix LX7 photo of a Derry bound NI Railways train from the Downhill Demesne. You can see the rain coming!

Tuesday evening (April 9, 2024), I am presenting a program on our recent travels in Ireland and the UK to the Harrisburg Chapter NRHS. My program is scheduled to begin about 6:30pm at: Hoss’s Steak and Sea House, 61 Gettysburg Pike, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055.

https://www.harrisburgnrhs.org/meetings

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NIR Downhill, Co. Derry—Two Years Ago.

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On this day, 8 Oct 2016, I made this view of an Northern Ireland Railways CAF at Downhill, Co. Derry on its run from Derry/Londonderry to Belfast.

Exposed using my FujiFilm XT1.

A similar view from this sequence appeared in my book Brian Solomon’s Railway Guide to Europe. 

The book is available from the Kalmbach Hobby Store and Amazon.

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photography, Tips and Technique

Downhill, Co. Derry, Northern Ireland—Shafts of Light with some Ocean Side Cliffs (and a wee NIR railcar down below).

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Some of Ireland’s finest rail-side scenery is in the North. At Downhill, Co. Derry massive vertical cliffs rise high above the Belfast-Derry line, with the great expanse of the North Atlantic beyond.

In October, lighting can be a bit tricky, as the same cliffs that make the scene and offer elevation also block the sun much of the day.

One trick: filtered sun (that is with thin cloud) makes for a less contrasty scene. By carefully exposing for the shaft of light at the center of the image, and then impose a digital graduated neutral density filter at the top of the frame, I was able to produce a balanced over-all image.

A distant view where the subject is but a spec in a vast scene.
A distant view where the subject is but a spec in a vast scene.

Using my 18-135 zoom, I've remained at the same cliff-side vantage point, but pulled back the focal length. Here the NI Railways 4001-series railcar is more prominent.
Using my 18-135 zoom, I’ve remained at the same cliff-side vantage point, but pulled back the focal length. Here the NI Railways 4001-series railcar is more prominent.

The photographer's quandary: with a wide view, you can include the ocean, but the cliffs seem smaller relative to the whole scene.
The photographer’s quandary: with a wide view, you can include the ocean, but the cliffs seem smaller relative to the whole scene.

The other afternoon, I made these photos with Denis McCabe and Stephen Hirsch which feature a Derry to Belfast NI Railways railcar. While I worked primarily with my FujiFilm X-T1, I also exposed a few 35mm colour slides using my old Canon EOS-3 with 100mm lens.

 

As of this posting, those slides remain latent (exposed, but unprocessed), so we’ll need to wait to see if I got my exposure correct. (My notes read f7.1 at 1/250th of a second, which is consistent with the reading from my Minolta Mark4 handheld light meter, but a bit on the dark side for the camera meter).

 

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