It’s hard to beat steam in the glint light! Dick Gruber and I spent the weekend of August 17, 1996, photographing Northern Pacific 4-6-0 328 working Wisconsin Central trackage in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.
While we made many fine images on that trip, for me the money-shot was this one I exposed of the locomotive steaming up at Dresser, Wisconsin as the sun rose.
Exposed on Fuji Provia 100F with a Nikon F3T.
There’s an old adage among photographers: ‘f5.6 and be there!’
I’ve said before, and it’s true. The best way to get great photos is to be there when it happens. And that’s the real secret.
Exposed with a Nikon F3T on Kodachrome 25 slide film. I was toying with my 35mm perspective control lens to keep the horizon in view, but my angle of view was a bit too extreme for the shift feature, which resulted in this slightly strange perspective.
Here’s something neat; I was photographing a westward Southern Pacific freight running along the shore of San Pablo Bay at Pinole, when I spotted this old Northern Pacific box car in consist.
By 1992, Northern Pacific had been gone for 22 years, which seemed like a lifetime to me! Here was this vision of a railroad long gone, but still moving freight.
Of course, today its not still uncommon to see Burlington Northern cars in old paint, and BN has been gone 19 years. Funny how that works.
BN SD60Ms westbound at Sentinel Butte. Exposed with a Nikon F3T with f1.8 105mm lens on Kodachrome 25 slide film; shutter and f-stop information unrecorded; metered using a Sekonic Studio Deluxe hand-held light meter.
In mid-July 1994, I spent several days photographing along Burlington Northern’s former Northern Pacific mainline in western North Dakota. Here the railway snaked through the Badlands, with the landscape characterized by unusual geological formations.
On the evening of July 12, 1994, BN sent a fleet of westward empty coal trains (described as ‘coal cars’ on the railroad) over the NP between Mandan, North Dakota and Glendive, Montana. At 7pm I caught this empty led by an SD60M at Sentinel Butte. Fast moving fair weather clouds made for some complicated lighting and a tricky exposure, but ultimately resulted in a more dramatic photograph.
This was my second experience with this line. My first was viewing the line from the dome of the North Coast Limited some 24 years earlier. I was only four years old on that trip, but the train ride gave me lasting memories. My dad exposed slides from the dome and dutch-doors of the train and from the Vista dome, but I wasn’t yet working with cameras.
Watch out for rattlesnakes! It seems like a clichéd railfan warning. Although, I’ve encountered rattlers on several occasions, I’d not allowed fear of snakes (or heights) interfere with my photography. In July 1994, I was on a prolonged trip working my way east from San Francisco to Waukesha, Wisconsin. Part of this excursion, was a ten-day exploration of Montana. Working on a tip from Blair Kooistra regarding a interesting photo location, I’d driven down the long rocky road to the old station at Lombard, deep within the canyon of the same name. Back in the day, it was here that Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension crossed Northern Pacific’s mainline. In 1994, as today, only vestiges survive of Milwaukee Road, while Montana Rail Link’s former NP line is the main attraction (if one hopes to see trains moving; the industrial archeologist is likely more interested in the old Milwaukee electrified line). The point of interest, which I’m told featured some GRS upper quadrant semaphores, required a several mile walk west into the canyon.
A large snake (of the non-rattling variety) suns itself on Montana Rail Link in Lombard Canyon, Montana. Nikon F3T with 105mm lens; Kodachrom 25 exposed at f4.5 1/250th second
I’d made it about a mile or two from the car when I had an unsettling feeling of being watched. Looking around I realized that several impressively large snakes were sunning themselves on the tracks and eyeing my progress. I determined, that while large, these snakes didn’t have rattles on them, and so probably wouldn’t harm me. I made a few photos of this one coiled in the gauge. Then I continued my westward hike when the bone chilling rattle of the dreaded serpent stopped me dead in the tracks. I looked cautiously to my left, and there coiled in a heap, between the tracks and the river, was by far the largest rattlesnake I’d ever seen. It didn’t look nice. Worse, it seemed poised as about to spring and gazing at me with its tongue listing back and forth. Thus ended my westward progress. There I was, a two mile walk from my car in an unpopulated barren canyon, with probably 20-30 mile drive to anyplace with a phone, and me not having a soul on the planet knowing where I stood! Not good.
Without making sudden moves, I reversed direction and carefully retreated on foot back toward the old Lombard station location where my car sat waiting for me. Thankfully, that was the last time I’ve encountered such a beast trackside. Unfortunately, the semaphore I’d hoped to photograph is now long gone. Where’s the photo of the momma rattler? I didn’t make one, primarily because it was lying in deep shadow and I was in bright sun. (Which is as good an excuse as any).
