VIA Plus One

On September 20 I went out to shoot the Canadian. It had been a "long" time since I last saw VIA 1 and I wanted to correct that. When I drove out Wilkes Avenue, I could see their headlights in my side mirror so I knew I had to be quick. I parked on the shoulder near Shaftesbury Boulevard and took the shot. Fortunately they were not going terribly fast.


I also processed this as black and white with a slightly different crop, just for the heck of it. Over on Google+ I asked which people liked more and most chose the colour version.


Here's the going away shot.


Since it was so bright, I shot at 1/800s shutter speed so everything is nice and sharp. I've found in the past that I did not set the shutter speed fast enough and I would get a tiny bit of blur, especially with the fast passenger trains. I also set my camera to center focus instead of using all of the focus points, and I think it helps avoid the "focus hunt" that dooms some shots.

After the Canadian ambled past, I hopped into my car and chased them. I easily overtook them before the Perimeter and proceeded out on the gravel road. Unfortunately for me, someone had dumped some new gravel on the road and it made it treacherous to drive more than about 60 km/hr there (limit: 90) so I decided I had to take my next shot quickly. I went onto Hall Road and took video there.


After that I chased on after them but they did not stop at Diamond, so there was no catching them. I saw fellow railfan Brian S. out there, so we had a good chat about train shows, idiot railfans and Eric Gagnon's upcoming book. Soon enough, a westbound CN container train came into view so we shot that too.


CN 2676 splits the westbound signals at mile 14.4. CN 8022 was in the middle of the train and CN 2281 was on the rear.

Buh-bye!