Yesterday, a tornado hit Columbia, Pa., tearing the roof off a building and causing other damage.

Just two days earlier, Kris, Seamus, and I waited trackside in town, listening not for a warning siren, but for the scanner’s crackle: “Clear Cola eastbound.”

When we heard that, I drove into position near my pre-selected location near milepost 37 on the Port Road Branch. I’d posted a photo from this location a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to try the location again, this time with a telephoto lens and from a slightly different vantage point.

My goal was to better feature the Veterans Memorial Bridge, which carries Route 462 over the Susquehanna River and can be seen to the left of the locomotive in the latter images of this sequence.

Not long after parking, we could hear Norfolk Southern unit coal train 594 rolling along.

I made these photos with my Nikon Z7-II fitted with an f/2.8 Nikkor 70-200mm lens.

To make the most of the evening light, I processed the NEF RAW files using DxO PureRaw 5 with DeepPRIME 3 corrections, followed by adjustments in PhotoLab 9.

Tracking the Light Explores Railroad Photography and wishes Columbia a speedy recovery!