Tracking West
Destruction
With the Bug Fire burning not far away, and a truck sitting in what will probably be its final resting place, a UP train had successfully tackled Beckwourth Pass and was about to duck under a hill before entering the Sierra Valley.
I had found this spot on my friend and I's previous trip out here, originally wanting a shot of a manifest from the top of the tunnel. What you don't see on Google Maps is this truck, as it was completely covered by the trees and shadows. By the time the train had showed up though, I wasn't thrilled with how the light looked and wanted redemption, and I sure got it.
The afternoon started with shooting an MNPRVX at Doyle. When we found out about this train originally, we were in Quincy, this train was at Sand Pass, and MGRRV was running a few hours behind it at Ronda, which is a siding between Gerlach, NV and Antelope Hill. On our way over, we saw a massive plume of smoke from a nearby wildfire burning. We immediately agreed on making it a priority to get a good shot of the wildfire with a train. After racing to Doyle to get the first train, it was off to Sand Pass for the MGRRV.
After we got our shot with the soon to be knocked searchlights, the train moved decently slow despite being extremely short. With this in mind, we caught it at Omira and pulled off a couple pacing shots before heading to Reno Junction. Screaming down Highway 395 to this spot, we were amazed by how big the smoke cloud was. This cloud was the result of the Fred and Bug Fires merging into one massive fire, and it was burning right on the other side of that mountain. This was about the same time I realized the shot I wanted was going to have the fire directly behind the train, so I was excited. After getting there, we had a long wait, ended up being about an hour and a half, and watching the smoke and firefighting planes fly over was quite something.
During this wait, I also decided to really take a look at the truck that peaked my interest for this shot in the first place. I already knew by the 4x4 decal that this was a Ford, but upon taking the time to look at the body I realized it was almost certainly a 10th gen F150, though in that condition at first glance it looked like it could have been an 11th as well. It also got me thinking how it ended up there, looking at other satellite imagery it looks to have only been dumped here in the past few years, but also why it was abandoned and why here? With the condition it is in, unfortunately, this truck will undoubtedly never see the road ever again, as the damage would probably make building a new one from the ground up cheaper.
Destruction
With the Bug Fire burning not far away, and a truck sitting in what will probably be its final resting place, a UP train had successfully tackled Beckwourth Pass and was about to duck under a hill before entering the Sierra Valley.
I had found this spot on my friend and I's previous trip out here, originally wanting a shot of a manifest from the top of the tunnel. What you don't see on Google Maps is this truck, as it was completely covered by the trees and shadows. By the time the train had showed up though, I wasn't thrilled with how the light looked and wanted redemption, and I sure got it.
The afternoon started with shooting an MNPRVX at Doyle. When we found out about this train originally, we were in Quincy, this train was at Sand Pass, and MGRRV was running a few hours behind it at Ronda, which is a siding between Gerlach, NV and Antelope Hill. On our way over, we saw a massive plume of smoke from a nearby wildfire burning. We immediately agreed on making it a priority to get a good shot of the wildfire with a train. After racing to Doyle to get the first train, it was off to Sand Pass for the MGRRV.
After we got our shot with the soon to be knocked searchlights, the train moved decently slow despite being extremely short. With this in mind, we caught it at Omira and pulled off a couple pacing shots before heading to Reno Junction. Screaming down Highway 395 to this spot, we were amazed by how big the smoke cloud was. This cloud was the result of the Fred and Bug Fires merging into one massive fire, and it was burning right on the other side of that mountain. This was about the same time I realized the shot I wanted was going to have the fire directly behind the train, so I was excited. After getting there, we had a long wait, ended up being about an hour and a half, and watching the smoke and firefighting planes fly over was quite something.
During this wait, I also decided to really take a look at the truck that peaked my interest for this shot in the first place. I already knew by the 4x4 decal that this was a Ford, but upon taking the time to look at the body I realized it was almost certainly a 10th gen F150, though in that condition at first glance it looked like it could have been an 11th as well. It also got me thinking how it ended up there, looking at other satellite imagery it looks to have only been dumped here in the past few years, but also why it was abandoned and why here? With the condition it is in, unfortunately, this truck will undoubtedly never see the road ever again, as the damage would probably make building a new one from the ground up cheaper.