I have been taking photo of trains since early 1972. Since then I have taken over 100,000 train photos. From 1972 to July 2005 my photos were either B&W, color prints, or slides. Beginning in July 2005 I started taking digital photos along with my normal slide photos. In July 2006 I purchased a CANON 5D along with a Canon 50mm f1.4 lens. During my July 2006 trip to and from the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association convention in Bozeman, MT I used my 5D as my main camera and took slides only as backup with slide camera a Canon New F-1. I did rent a Canon 70-200 2.8 is zoom lens for this trip. I used up my last five rolls of Professional Kodachrome 64 on this trip. Since then I have only taken digital photos. I like the Canon zoom lenst I rented but I thought it was too heavy. My current cameras are two Canon 5D MKIIIs and I use the following Canon L series prime lens 50mm f1.2, 85mm f1.2, 135mm f2.0, and a 200 mm f2.8. All four of these lens are excellent lens. I use a Canon 24-70mmm f2.8 for family work and on tours of railroad facilities during the NPRHA conventions. This is also an excellent lens. I should point out that the Canon 85mm f1.2 L lens is almost as heavy as the Canon 70-200mm 2.8 IS zoom lens but it is shorter and the camera is better balanced.

Currently I am woking on conventing my slide photos to digital files using an Epson V850 using SilverFast 8.8 software. The final processing of the scans are done Photoshop Elements editor. So far the results have been excellent. The tif file size of my scans are between 80 MB and 150 MB for 35 mm slides. The large file size allows me to make excellent 11 X 17 and 13 X 19 prints from my Canon Pro-10 printer.

Yes I do like Canon products. I switched from Pentax and Leica cameras to two Canon New F1s and Canon lens in September 1988 because the Canon cameras and lens had the features i was looking for in camera and the camera service Canon gives is excellent. The Leica took nice photos but Leica's $1,200 50mm f1.4 wasn't as good as Canon's 50mm f1.4 lens with price of $150. The Leica and lens cost me over $3,000 in 1987 but thanks to a very good Costa Mesa camera store that catered to the folks of Newport Beach, CA I got most of my money back.

For the last 25 years I have lived in Simi Valley, CA. I retired in 2014 and since then I have spent much of my time photographing the UP coast freight trains and especially the UP coast oil cans that ran from oil loading facility at Wunpost CA to a refinery in Wilmington CA a couple of times a week until the cars got too old to be used in late December 2018. One train may not sound like much but thanks to lots of input on HeadupsCoastFans group website you soon figure out the basic schedule for this train and with lots time, gas, daylight, and California sunshine I was able to get lots of very good to excellent photos many in locations never seen in books on the SP Coast line.

My plan is present to you first my oil can photos starting with the 1999 to 2006. In addition I have lots of other photos from the Maritimes to BC in Canada along with photos from all over the United States all of which were taken my me from 1972 to now. But you need to be patience with me as figure out how to upload photo files that are not too large and figure out how to create albums.