Tag Archives: Portlaoise

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Irish Rail at Portlaoise—Two Night Views.

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The other evening I made these two night photographs using my Lumix LX7 at Irish Rail’s station in Portlaoise.

Night photography involves compromises. My techniques sometimes seem counter intuitive.

In this situation, I was traveling light. To optimize the amount of information captured, I set the ISO to 200 and steadied the camera on available surfaces to minimize the effects of camera shake.

After exposure, working with Camera RAW files in Lightroom, I made various adjustments to shadows, highlights and over all contrast as a means of optimizing of the appearance of the final images.

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Great Southern & Western Station at Portlaoise.

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I could have titled this ‘Dusk in the Rain’.

As it happens I was at Irish Rail’s Portlaoise Station on my way up to Dublin and I needed a few potential illustrations of the 1840s buildings for my book on European railway travel. I thought, ‘what better time than now to make some up to the minute photos?’

Working with my Lumix LX7 I made these views that I feel capture the atmosphere of the station.

Looking down road toward Cork.

An Irish Rail Portlaoise commuter train arrives during light rain.

Any favorites?

 

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Meeting of the Gauges near Portlaoise

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There are only a few places where the narrow gauge Bord na Mona crosses Irish Rail’s broad gauge lines.

If you ride from Dublin to Cork, you might catch a glimpse of the three-foot gauge tracks ducking under the mainline a ways west of the ‘Laoise Traincar Depot’ (where Irish Rail maintains its Intercity Railcar fleet).

Dublin bound Irish Rail ICR (Intercity Railcar) crosses the Bord na Mona 3-foot gauge near Portlaoise. Fuji X-T1 photo.
Dublin bound Irish Rail ICR (Intercity Railcar) crosses the Bord na Mona 3-foot gauge near Portlaoise. Fuji X-T1 photo.

Cork-bound train with a 201-class diesel crosses the Bord na Mona 3-foot gauge near Portlaoise. Fuji X-T1 photo.
Cork-bound train with a 201-class diesel crosses the Bord na Mona 3-foot gauge near Portlaoise. Fuji X-T1 photo.

Making successful photos of trains here is tricky. They sail along at 90mph and owing to the angle of the lines, there’s very little time to position the front of the train at the crossing point.

I set my Fuji X-T1 to ‘CH’ (continuous high), which automatically exposes a burst of images in rapid succession.

 

Owing to infrequent operations on the narrow gauge, it will be a challenge to try to score an ‘under-and-over’ image here. But at least that’s a goal for another day.

 

 

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