First Snow - Morant's Curve - Canadian Rockies- Alberta Canada

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Daveyboy101 said:
Well lets say its funny how things work out. lol. It was Oct and I started early before sun up waiting for this infamous train that has no schedule. After 7 hours of -15C temps, raging blizzard at one point with zero visibility, to a train that kept coming from the wrong direction. So after running back and forth to my car to defrost my body parts numerous times it was 2 pm ish and I was done, frozen to the bone, I had tapped out , given up. The sun had come out and the mountains cleared but I was still done and fully committed to calling it a day. As I started to tear down another train came but again from the wrong direction, I thought to myself "great of course it is" , but ....... It was going in reverse, I then realized that eventually the front of the train would be facing me and would appear as it was coming towards me. I scrambled to get my camera back on the tripod and with only seconds to spare I prayed and sprayed and got the shot . (That train is actually travelling in reverse !!! ) With a little luck it definitely turned out to be worth effort and the frost bite haha
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Well done, congrats on your perseverance! Thanks for sharing, I know only too well what it is like waiting for target trains. I wasted thousands of hours over the course of my career just to get my work done. A lot of the territory I maintained involved getting on the tracks to do maintenance behind trains at remote locations.
 
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gnpToday said:
Well done, congrats on your perseverance! Thanks for sharing, I know only too well what it is like waiting for target trains. I wasted thousands of hours over the course of my career just to get my work done. A lot of the territory I maintained involved getting on the tracks to do maintenance behind trains at remote locations.
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I bet some of those locations were amazing too !!
 
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Daveyboy101 said:
I bet some of those locations were amazing too !!
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Yes, but sadly most were not that visible from locations other than the tracks. Here is an image taken in 2008 that was selected for the BNSF calendar in 2012. Not very good by current standards but a lot of people did like it.
BCM_BNSF Westbound Grain_Marias (1).jpg
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I wanted to try and get this shot the last time I was up in that area but I couldn't figure out how to know when a train might come by. Sounds like it's a waiting game. Glad I didn't wait as I was trying to cover a lot of ground but oh man you make it hard to not do that the next time. Excellent shot. I love everything about it!!!
 
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Daveyboy101 said:
Well lets say its funny how things work out. lol. It was Oct and I started early before sun up waiting for this infamous train that has no schedule. After 7 hours of -15C temps, raging blizzard at one point with zero visibility, to a train that kept coming from the wrong direction. So after running back and forth to my car to defrost my body parts numerous times it was 2 pm ish and I was done, frozen to the bone, I had tapped out , given up. The sun had come out and the mountains cleared but I was still done and fully committed to calling it a day. As I started to tear down another train came but again from the wrong direction, I thought to myself "great of course it is" , but ....... It was going in reverse, I then realized that eventually the front of the train would be facing me and would appear as it was coming towards me. I scrambled to get my camera back on the tripod and with only seconds to spare I prayed and sprayed and got the shot . (That train is actually travelling in reverse !!! ) With a little luck it definitely turned out to be worth effort and the frost bite haha
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And that, as the late Paul Harvey would say, is the rest of the story.

That's a wonderful shot. Yes, it could be improved, but that's just a reason to go out and take another one. And a reminder that we can't always get the "perfect shot" and instead have to settle for "almost perfect." I can't think of a single shot that I've ever taken that, if I had the opportunity, I'd take the exact same shot. There is always something that I'd do differently with the shot.

Does anyone know if the trains run that portion of the railway at night? I'd love to take a long-exposure shot of that scene with the lights from the train, even if just minimal, as a feature of the exposure. It certainly sounds as though it might take several days of very cold discomfort to experience the opportunity.
 
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