Jackson Alexander
Episode IV: A New Hope
I've never watched a Star Wars film in its entirety, I'm a poser. I had to google the names of the movies to figure out the caption here.
One of the more questionable decisions I made back when covid was running strong was only chasing the Bessemer & Lake Erie one single time when they had their IC power. Knowing what I know now, I would have spent more time there instead of shooting locally as it was only a 3 hour drive for me to get anywhere on the northern end of their system. For a solid year or two when I could've gone down, they ran daily with Illinois Central SD70s sporting P5s on ore trains past searchlight signals. Ugh.
On this day, the conditions couldn't have been worse for chasing black locomotives. A horrifically dreary September day gave way to severe thunderstorms mid chase, and I was still a lazy little boy who relied on auto settings on his camera. So, combine auto settings with a guy still figuring out how to frame photos and you're in 'blind squirrel finding a nut' territory. Eventually, after chasing the train for a few hours following around fellow geeks I didn't really know well just yet, we ended up at a location I was actually familiar with. Kimbles Viaduct is easily seen from I-79 when using the southbound lanes, and I had seen it many a time on family road trips as a kid and had always wanted a photo of it. My opportunity came that day, as I parked on the road below and ran my way up to interstate level for a respectable shot of the ore loads coming south. The rain cleared up and it got bright enough for my camera to not have a seizure trying to get the settings right, and I managed to keep the photo level and framed. Sadly this is one of maybe three photos from that day I would ever bother showing people, but it does it for me.
I ended up taking a little present home with me that day in the form of an airborne pathogen. I came down with covid a few days later as one of the other guys had it as well without knowing yet.
Was it worth it? Sure.
Episode IV: A New Hope
I've never watched a Star Wars film in its entirety, I'm a poser. I had to google the names of the movies to figure out the caption here.
One of the more questionable decisions I made back when covid was running strong was only chasing the Bessemer & Lake Erie one single time when they had their IC power. Knowing what I know now, I would have spent more time there instead of shooting locally as it was only a 3 hour drive for me to get anywhere on the northern end of their system. For a solid year or two when I could've gone down, they ran daily with Illinois Central SD70s sporting P5s on ore trains past searchlight signals. Ugh.
On this day, the conditions couldn't have been worse for chasing black locomotives. A horrifically dreary September day gave way to severe thunderstorms mid chase, and I was still a lazy little boy who relied on auto settings on his camera. So, combine auto settings with a guy still figuring out how to frame photos and you're in 'blind squirrel finding a nut' territory. Eventually, after chasing the train for a few hours following around fellow geeks I didn't really know well just yet, we ended up at a location I was actually familiar with. Kimbles Viaduct is easily seen from I-79 when using the southbound lanes, and I had seen it many a time on family road trips as a kid and had always wanted a photo of it. My opportunity came that day, as I parked on the road below and ran my way up to interstate level for a respectable shot of the ore loads coming south. The rain cleared up and it got bright enough for my camera to not have a seizure trying to get the settings right, and I managed to keep the photo level and framed. Sadly this is one of maybe three photos from that day I would ever bother showing people, but it does it for me.
I ended up taking a little present home with me that day in the form of an airborne pathogen. I came down with covid a few days later as one of the other guys had it as well without knowing yet.
Was it worth it? Sure.