Busy Day

I was trackside a couple of times on July 7 and had a lot of luck catching trains. There were no really unique engines but there were a lot of trains.

I was just east of Diamond at 8 AM and soon enough CN 111 rolled out of the sun with CN 2285 leading and CN 8906 trailing, and CN 2334 in the middle of the train, on the south track.

I was shooting directly into the sun here, so I had to do some significant editing to get a usable photo.

Pardon the incorrect caption at the beginning of the video.

I played with panning shots as the containers rolled by. The trick is to set a shutter speed slow enough to show motion but not too slow that it blurs the target. Here I used 1/10 second.

Here are some good tips on panning shots.

Soon after they passed, I heard them talking to CN 304 so I swung the cameras around to get the eastbound 304. It was led by SD75I CN 5607 and ES44DC CN 2241, on the north track.

The morning sun is much nicer on eastbounds! This train had quite a few CN 197xxx hopper cars, often used to carry gypsum out east.


Soon after that, CN 347 rolled past on the south track with CN 5683 and CN 5763.



Again, sorry for the caption mixup.

So that was three trains within an hour. I left trackside for a while, but I was back by the Rivers subdivision at noon to catch the Canadian... and more...