OCS - S-Curve
Around 8:30am in Central New Mexico, I received word that the deadhead BNSF employee special had just entered Belen and was getting ready to refuel and receive a new crew. At the time I received this info, I was at the west end of Abo shooting morning eastbounds. I, of course, got giddy at the news of this train heading my way soon. However, I quickly started thinking about what exact time it would show up to my area and then it set in that I would have an issue. The issue was that the train would most likely not leave Belen until around 11:00am, thus meaning it would not get to me until around noon.
After I came to this realization, I began thinking of the best possible place to shoot this train since it would be straight up high-sun by the time it would get to me. After a few minutes of going through the possibilities, I decided to look back on the last shot I took at the S-curve just west of Mountainair from the previous day, My last shot was recorded at 11:15am, and while it was high-sun, it still looked pretty decent. So? I decided this would be the spot to shoot the deadhead employee special.
After convincing my traveling companion of my plan, we left Abo with plenty of time to spare to get a bite to eat in Mountainair. After getting some good food in our system, we drove back to the Airbnb we were staying at and started making the hike to this spot. We had plenty of time to spare at this point.
Now, on to the actual picture you see here. O-BAKTOP is running on Main 1 because they were running around a slow manifest that was having trip optimizer problems (imagine that...). As you can imagine, the train had no problems going up the grade, traveling at turbo speeds of about 40mph. That might not sound super fast, but considering the strong grade they are climbing? It's fast. Most of the super Z trains do good to make 25mph going up the hill.
This particular photo is right at the S-curve just west of Mountainair and is more of the telephoto version.
OCS - S-Curve
Around 8:30am in Central New Mexico, I received word that the deadhead BNSF employee special had just entered Belen and was getting ready to refuel and receive a new crew. At the time I received this info, I was at the west end of Abo shooting morning eastbounds. I, of course, got giddy at the news of this train heading my way soon. However, I quickly started thinking about what exact time it would show up to my area and then it set in that I would have an issue. The issue was that the train would most likely not leave Belen until around 11:00am, thus meaning it would not get to me until around noon.
After I came to this realization, I began thinking of the best possible place to shoot this train since it would be straight up high-sun by the time it would get to me. After a few minutes of going through the possibilities, I decided to look back on the last shot I took at the S-curve just west of Mountainair from the previous day, My last shot was recorded at 11:15am, and while it was high-sun, it still looked pretty decent. So? I decided this would be the spot to shoot the deadhead employee special.
After convincing my traveling companion of my plan, we left Abo with plenty of time to spare to get a bite to eat in Mountainair. After getting some good food in our system, we drove back to the Airbnb we were staying at and started making the hike to this spot. We had plenty of time to spare at this point.
Now, on to the actual picture you see here. O-BAKTOP is running on Main 1 because they were running around a slow manifest that was having trip optimizer problems (imagine that...). As you can imagine, the train had no problems going up the grade, traveling at turbo speeds of about 40mph. That might not sound super fast, but considering the strong grade they are climbing? It's fast. Most of the super Z trains do good to make 25mph going up the hill.
This particular photo is right at the S-curve just west of Mountainair and is more of the telephoto version.