How I spent my National Train Day (pics of 261)

Fan-tas-tic! photos Elliot, its great to see 261 running again. I hope someday it gets somewhere near Chicagoland so I can see in person!

"When you ride the train, you don't get pictures like these."

While that statement is correct, you also miss the point of why these trains are running.  I hope you at least bought a ticket or made a donation in the amount of a ticket to support the project.  Otherwise they won't run at all.

Rick, I heard that she's heading to Chicago next Friday. I haven't had a chance to verify that. I will not be chasing that trip, or the one to Montana in July.

Sorry Rick, I just checked. 261 is not making the trip, only some of her cars are tagging along with the Empire Builder to the National Restaurant Show.

Great photos Elliot.  Looks like a great chase and a great day.  Thanks for posting them.

Chris

Thanks for posting the new photos.

Dan

Elliot:  Many thanx for posting those pictures.  I realize that the weekend was probably not the best for photos, or even to stand and just watch the train.  Too bad.  It was a genuinely crummy day here in Cleveland the weekend that the #765 ran, first with a NS Employee Special and then with the excursion train, the next day.

Guess we're rushing the season a bit with these May excursion dates.  Hopefully, I'll have a chance to get our ride/photos, etc. sometime later th is summer.

Paul Fischer

You're welcome Paul (and everyone else). There's no accounting for mother nature, this has been a weird spring to say the least. It is almost June and I may have to turn the heat back on tonight, but tomorrow is forecast high 70's.

That day was cool, but the wind made it flat out raw, gusting between 20 and 30. It was hard to hold the camera steady with the long lens on it, and I'm a big guy. The wind was out of the northwest, so photos taken of the right side of the train were mostly obscured, as everything coming out of the stack washed down the side (pics 2 & 5).

I took over 400 shots that day. The ones posted above were the best I could post quickly from the hotel room in Duluth.

Here are a few more.

This is the best shot of the right side I got all day.

Railpictures.net will probably reject this shot because of the flanger post right in front of the pilot. The smoke conveniently blots out the Amtrak Genesis behind the auxiliary tender.



My wife took these next three from the car while I drove.



For those who have never chased a steam engine, this is what it looks like on the road.



261 through the birches. If spring had been on time, the leaves would have covered this shot.

Nice shots Elliot!  Thanks for posting.

Thanks Charlie.

I spent the better part of the evening cropping and resizing 9 shots to railpictures.net specs. I used to be able to do that a lot faster, but I had to relearn how with Windows 8 (blech). I should have done this weeks ago.

I'm guessing they'll take 3. We'll see.