Most of the time, I try to avoid going to events that are sure to draw a lot of people, not only because I'm not a huge fan of crowds, but also because with so many young (and also, these days, older) folks out trying to catch multiple shots of a train by "chasing" it for either YouTube or photos, road conditions can range from congested to hazardous. However, when I heard that 16 was back, and that the road was offering seats on a freight run, I had one of my rare(r) instances of impulse overriding logic and decided to ride the freight, then take some pictures of the day's passenger runs (about half of which were steam-powered).
Remarkably, there were few to no accidents (that I heard of), the foamers were polite, and the chasing was easy enough that folks could spread out across multiple spots and often get two shots in each way (at least for the passenger runs). I still have to cut together my shots from the passenger-only freight train run-by and the excursion trains, but I quickly stitched together my clips from riding the platform and in the cupola of the caboose on Saturday.
I'll also say that the staff I interacted with were top-notch, they made all the ticketed folks feel welcome and gave us a second run-by when clouds messed up the first attempt, kept the crowds at bay (with help from firemen and police) and all-in-all did a good job managing an event that tripled Orbsonia's population and resulted in troops of foamers everywhere.
Here are some of my photos from the day's chasing, let's see yours!
