Tracking West
Killing Time
After waiting all morning with little traffic to entertain us, my friend and I made our way to Doyle. After a couple hours of waiting, the train of the day showed up in the middle of the afternoon.
The day started early, a good friend of mine from Ohio was visiting so we took a day to go shoot the WP. I knew a CN leader was coming in, however, I was not sure when it would get to Portola, only that it would be later in the day. On the way to Portola, we saw MNPRV halted at Williams Loop and pulled off to shoot it. After catching that, we made an attempt to find MGRRV. After intercepting it just east of town, we raced to the yard and saw 1983, the WP heritage unit, trailing on the train. While our plan was to shoot this at Clio, the train had pickups and setouts to do, which also included dropping 1983. Unfortunately, by the time it left lighting really wasn't going to be great for the train anywhere. Since it traffic was going to dead for most of the afternoon, it turned into us trying to find ways to kill time. After eventually deciding to hover around Doyle, we pulled off at a crossing just north of town with signals. After a long few hours of waiting at the crossing, the signals lit up.
Knowing this was most definitely our train, we raced straight into town and found a spot to set up. Shooting across a field, the shot lined up with great clouds and a green field of grass in an otherwise dead looking environment... go figure it's a desert. Eventually, we would get to Chilcoot where another friend would show up minutes before the train. The three of us would follow it to Portola where we would see 1983 headed eastbound long hood forward. While we didn't follow 83 since we had no clue where it was headed, days later we would find out it went to Gerlach and got stuck on rotation with the gypsum trains. After the CN left Portola, we followed it until we were almost out of light, ending the day at Keddie with one of the coolest skies I've ever shot.
If you want to see my friend's shots from Keddie go check them out!
Killing Time
After waiting all morning with little traffic to entertain us, my friend and I made our way to Doyle. After a couple hours of waiting, the train of the day showed up in the middle of the afternoon.
The day started early, a good friend of mine from Ohio was visiting so we took a day to go shoot the WP. I knew a CN leader was coming in, however, I was not sure when it would get to Portola, only that it would be later in the day. On the way to Portola, we saw MNPRV halted at Williams Loop and pulled off to shoot it. After catching that, we made an attempt to find MGRRV. After intercepting it just east of town, we raced to the yard and saw 1983, the WP heritage unit, trailing on the train. While our plan was to shoot this at Clio, the train had pickups and setouts to do, which also included dropping 1983. Unfortunately, by the time it left lighting really wasn't going to be great for the train anywhere. Since it traffic was going to dead for most of the afternoon, it turned into us trying to find ways to kill time. After eventually deciding to hover around Doyle, we pulled off at a crossing just north of town with signals. After a long few hours of waiting at the crossing, the signals lit up.
Knowing this was most definitely our train, we raced straight into town and found a spot to set up. Shooting across a field, the shot lined up with great clouds and a green field of grass in an otherwise dead looking environment... go figure it's a desert. Eventually, we would get to Chilcoot where another friend would show up minutes before the train. The three of us would follow it to Portola where we would see 1983 headed eastbound long hood forward. While we didn't follow 83 since we had no clue where it was headed, days later we would find out it went to Gerlach and got stuck on rotation with the gypsum trains. After the CN left Portola, we followed it until we were almost out of light, ending the day at Keddie with one of the coolest skies I've ever shot.
If you want to see my friend's shots from Keddie go check them out!