Fighting the Copious Amounts of Atmospheric Water Vapor

[cmherndon]

I'm back online now!

But first, how did I spend New Year's Eve?  It surely was not spent watching Dick Clark and the dropping of the ball in Times Square.  No sir...Randy, Emmett, Kathy and I headed down to Danville for a little bit of night photography.  Our intent was to catch the last train of 2005 and the first of 2006.

We departed sometime after 2200 and arrived in Danville a short time later.  The last train of 2005 turned out to be 275 with a spartan cab SD70 leading.



An EMD is always a great way to end the year.  It's also a great way to start the year.  44A turned out to be the first train of 2006 and it had a trio of those fine EMD products with NS 3399 leading the way.



124 was also switching in the east yard with a quartet of EMD's, including a GP15-1 in Conrail/Operation Lifesaver paint.  What a great way to start the year...

After getting a few hours of sleep, Emmett hollers at me and says that 287 is by Georgetown with EMDX 76 leading.  By the this time, the clouds have started to break and it looks like we might have some sun to shoot this guy in...or so we thought.  We kept getting sucker holes, but were forced with the option of shooting at the wye with overcast skies.

- I was actually pleased with my results, and now have shots of both demos leading trains.

As the train gets to Harrodsburg, the trailing unit (NS 8665) craps out on them and the conductor lists something like 10-15 problems the computer says is wrong with it (except for the obvious one).  With over 7400' of loaded racks, there's no way this train can make Waddy with a single unit, so the dispatcher tells them to pick up the Lawrenceburg engine.

It's a slow trip for them to Lawrenceburg with only one good locomotive, but they make it and cut off to pick up NS 5103. It's also here that we meet up with Bryan Jones and Steve Blake.



I also was able to get a shot of 5103 solo after the sun popped through a sucker hole...



287 has a warrant to go to Waddy, but that's changed to allow a grain train across.  Our little convoy heads over to Waddy anyway figuring we have about another 90 minutes worth of good light as the clouds are majorly broken up now and look like they're clearing off to the west.

We arrived at Waddy about the same time as 52R and actually managed to get a shot in some decent light.



It's estimated that 287 will be at Waddy in 30-40 minutes and that there's still enough sun.  However, a large line of clouds took out the sun for the remainder of the day.  I'll say one thing though.  287 surely did sound nice coming up the hill.

Until next time...

Hope y'all enjoy and thanks for looking!