Browsed by
Category: Indiana Trips

Meeting up with fellow railfans from Facebook

Meeting up with fellow railfans from Facebook

Comments 0 Comment
From left, Jim, Javid and Ryan waiting to shoot some street running action at La Grange, Ky – Photo by Adam Hill

This past weekend my good friend Ryan Scott from the Ft. Branch, Indiana area and I set-out on a day-long trip to photograph trains between Princeton, Indiana and what started out to be Louisville, Ky, but turned out to be La Grange, Ky. Our plan was to meet up with a fellow railfan friend of ours from Facebook, Javid Beykzadeh. Little did I realize that I’d end up meeting several more friends from Facebook while we were at it including, Adam Hill, Josh Kellerman, and Erik Landrum. 

The railfanning community is actually fairly large, if you take in the world and that’s pretty much what Facebook does for us. I have friends who are railfans from pretty much all over the world and it’s always cool to meetup in person in our travels in search of that perfect train picture! 

All my family already know my obsession with trains and photographing them whenever I can. Even, my nieces and nephews know about my love for trains, and I hope that I’m passing some of that onto them, but I digress.

As railfan trips go, this was a really good one with Ryan and I photographing 5 different railroads before the day was over. Evansville Western Railway, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Indiana Southern Railway and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. As day road trips go for me railfanning, this was a really good one!

Some of our group photographing Southbound with BNSF War Bonnet 791 at La Grange, Ky, – Photo by Jim Pearson

 

Other favorite photos of mine from our day-long trip are posted below.

June 9, 2018 – There’s just something about the lure of street running trains and when you throw in a BNSF War Bonnet, well, it makes it even better. Here we have a southbound CSX Q231-08 as begins to make it’s way through downtown La Grange toward Louisville, Ky. 

June 9, 2018 Norfolk Southern Heritage Unit 8099, “Southern” passes the signal at milepost 209.8, at Jefferson Township, Indiana, as it makes its way west on the NS Southern-East District. This scheme is from the Southern Railway (GE) which originated as the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company in 1827. On Christmas Day, 1830, it put into service the nation’s first regularly scheduled steam passenger train, “The Best Friend of Charleston.” Southern was incorporated in 1894 from the reorganization and consolidation of numerous predecessors, and absorbed another 68 railroad companies over the next six years.

June 9, 2018 – Here we find a crew getting NS Heritage 8099, Southern Unit, ready for pickup by an, Duke Energy coal train, at the NS Yard Office in Princeton, Indiana, after storms passed through the area. We got lots of great photographs, which you’ll see over the days to come and also met-up with several fellow railfans in person that we’ve been friends with on Facebook for sometime!

June 9, 2018 Norfolk Southern Heritage Unit 8099, “Southern” passes the signal at milepost 209.8, at Jefferson Township, Indiana, as it makes its way west on the NS Southern-East District. This scheme is from the Southern Railway (GE) which originated as the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company in 1827. On Christmas Day, 1830, it put into service the nation’s first regularly scheduled steam passenger train, “The Best Friend of Charleston.” Southern was incorporated in 1894 from the reorganization and consolidation of numerous predecessors, and absorbed another 68 railroad companies over the next six years. 

 

A different kind of (rail) Road Trip to Fort Branch, Indiana!

A different kind of (rail) Road Trip to Fort Branch, Indiana!

Comments 2 comments
Me working on shooting CSX railroad changing out a bridge at Ft. Branch, In. – Photo by Dave Kunkel

Earlier this week I set out on a day-long road trip to southern Indiana to shoot what’s called a time-lapse video of CSX Railroad changing out a bridge just outside Ft. Branch, Indiana.

Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. For example, an image of a scene may be captured once every second, then played back at 30 frames per second; the result is an apparent 30 times speed increase. Time-lapse photography can be considered the opposite of high speed photography or slow motion.

Processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, e.g. the motion of the sun and stars in the sky, become very pronounced. Time-lapse is the extreme version of the cinematography technique of undercranking, and can be confused with stop motion animation.

Work was supposed to being sometime around noon, but I wanted to make sure that I was there in case they started early, so I was up at 5am!! Yes, I said 5am!! Any of you know that as a rule my climb out of bed time is 8am, so yes, this was a bit of challenge. 

The drive up was smooth, this early in the morning on a Monday, so I guess that’s one thing that was good about getting up this early.

Weather was wonderful! Only thing I wish was there were a bit more clouds in the sky! I love clouds in my photographs and in a time-lapse they really add to the movement of the overall scene. However, it was mostly clear for the duration of my 6 hours of standing around the site where the work was being done. Yes, I said six hours! 

I had to park a good distance from the location where the work was going on, so at least I got a good bit of my daily 10,000 steps in by walking back and forth to the car for things like water, fresh batteries for the camera and so forth. I packed for the day long shoot with snacks, water, things to read and plenty of batteries for the camera. Only thing I forgot and didn’t think of until I was about 4 hours into the shoot, was suntan lotion! By the time, I remember it was a bit too late so for a few days after I was red faced! I did at least wear a hat and long sleeves! Next time I won’t forget! My face is still peeling!

The crews got clearance to start their work at about 9:50am and by that time I had figured out how I wanted to position my camera and the rate that I would shoot pictures for the final video. In case you’re interested, the camera was set to take a picture every second for the six hours! That’s a total of about 21,600 individual photographs! Once they were combined into individual movie clips I had a total of 23 video clips of the operation with about 15 minutes of video that I edited down to the final clip of just over 7 minutes that you see below.

I really enjoy doing time-lapse videos, but they are time consuming and take a bit of planning. Plus, there as to be plenty of movement that takes place to provide interesting visuals! While it’s not something I think, I could do on many of the longer road trips that my sister and I take, I plan on trying to do some more often for everyone’s enjoyment and pleasure!