Friday, October 28, 2011

Dark Meeting

I was out fairly early in the morning of October 22, looking for trains before heading to work. It was quite dark, even as it approached 8 AM, so I put the 50mm lens on my camera as it is the most light sensitive lens I have. I say that like I have a lot of lenses - I have 3.

Anyway, I was at Diamond when I noticed a CN eastbound train approaching. I shot CN 5701 East as it approached Diamond, then shot over the engineer's shoulder here as they were about to split the signals right at Diamond.
IC 2711 and CN 5701 in Winnipeg
I tweaked the image a fair bit to get some light into it. It's grainy because it was shot at ISO 1600, shutter speed 1/320, F/1.8. I probably could have lived with a shutter speed of around 1/200 but it would not have made that much difference.

I gave chase. It was an intermodal train but there were no DPU engines as far as I could see. I never did catch the number. I heard CN 545 talking to them and I figured they were going to meet somewhere. I picked a spot on Wilkes Avenue that I thought was likely and I saw headlights approaching from the east. It was 545 with CN 4765 leading CN 4776, both GP38 engines.
CN 4765 on train 545 in Winnipeg

I wasn't sure where exactly the meet would occur but it would be very near me. I was worrying that 545 on the south track would block my view of the meet, but I got lucky and managed to capture it.
CN 4765 and CN 5701 meet in Winnipeg

That was it for that morning!

2 comments:

Eric said...

Good timing and location for that meet, Steve. I have had a very few such experiences, and photographed even fewer, since it is such a matter of timing. However, I'm planning a Trackside Treasure post with the photos. My first was in 1978, and included some of 4765's wide-cab sisters.

Thanks for sharing,
Eric

Canadian Train Geek said...

I got lucky... sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

I always look forward to your posts!