Category Archives: Photography

New Trip Report – C&TS Rotary OY Run – Feb 2020

The weekend of Feb 29 – Mar 1, 2020, saw something that hasn’t been seen on Colorado narrow gauge rails in 23 years – a rotary snowplow in action. 150 lucky individuals, including myself, were on hand to witness D&RGW Rotary OY clear snow from the west side of Cumbres Pass for the first time since 1997.

After only 18 months, I’ve finally gotten through my photos and pulled everything together. They’re in a new trip report over here.

Rotary OY works through light snow just above the second crossing on Saturday, Feb 29, 2020.

New Trip Report: Amtrak 301 Across Colorado

On Saturday, July 17, Amtrak’s latest new piece of motive power was added to the eastbound California Zephyr leaving Emeryville – Amtrak ALC-42 #301. 301 is the second of 75 new Siemens Charger locomotives purchased to replace the aging P42DCs on the long distance trains. It also wears a scheme commemorating the very first Amtrak painted locomotive – #4316 – from back when Amtrak was founded in 1971.

With the train running late and having nothing else that I really absolutely had to do on Sunday, I decided to go chase it and see this new engine while it was still pristine. I caught up with it at Glenwood, when it was about 3h30 behind schedule, and wound up chasing it all the way to the Moffat Tunnel. The results can be found in a new trip report – Amtrak 301 Across Colorado.

A first good look at AMTK 301 while the train makes a station stop at Glenwood Springs for a surprisingly large number of passengers

New Trip Report – Two Trips to the Texas State RR

In an effort to do literally anything that wasn’t software development or a meeting this evening, I decided to dust off a couple trips I made down to the Texas State Railroad for a pair of photo trains – one in May 2012 while American Heritage Railways (the Durango & Silverton’s parent) was running the line, and another in May 2015 shortly after Iowa Pacific Holdings had taken over and returned some of the equipment to a more historic appearance. I’ve also included a brief history of the route, for anyone curious.

If you’re interested, here’s the page you’re looking for.

Sunset at Palestine, May 2, 2015

The Story of 20 Year Old Film

When I cleaned out my garage in January, I found a box of stuff that probably hadn’t been touched since my ex and I bought this place 15 years ago. At the bottom was a small Ziploc bag with eight rolls of color print film in it, shot but never developed. Now given that I stopped shooting film in early 2001, that gives you a minimum possible age for this stuff. Could there be any hope for this stuff? Back when I still shot film, heat was pretty much enemy #1 and I was extremely careful about keeping film cold if it wasn’t in the camera. This stuff, on the other hand, had been in a box in a hot garage for nearly two decades.

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