Happy Earth Day, ladies and gentlemen! For this week's Midweek Photos, I decided to show you all of the rail action in North America... all at once LOL Of course, from this distance, a lot of the details of a single train operation get lost. But with good timing, lighting and a good lens, you might have a great combination of distance and train action. This helps to give a sense of "place" among our train pictures.
I was lucky on Saturday, April 18, as I had the combination of all three, when Steamtown began operations of their Scranton Limited trains for 2015. With a crystal clear sky, and my telephoto lens, I captured the above images as the train passed Mattes St. Tower, the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel and passed over the Spruce St. Complex. I was about 1/2 mile from the tracks in getting these shots of the 10:30 train.
Using a more conventional lens (18-55 mm) I took these images of 11:30's train, closer to the tracks by the University of Scranton.
On Sundays, Steamtown runs this same train an extra mile to reach Nay Aug Park, and a bridge that spans the Roaring Brook. Here are some of the telephoto views.
And three more of the same train with the conventional lens. The above 6 photos were taken from the ledges around the face of the Nay Aug Tunnel.
The good thing about this train is that it runs several times in a day, and at a rather slow speed, so it's great to get the photos you want.
More often than not, trains travel at a speed you can't catch it more than once. That is when your timing is most important.
If you have had good fortune in catching trains lately, from a distance or up close, please share any photos you like here. Chances are we will like them too.
Have a great week. See you next Wednesday.
