Photo of the Week #002

By
BNSF Units #7318 (ES44DC), #6863 (ES44C4), and #6829 (ES44C4) fuel up before heading out of Missoula Yard with a coal load on October 7th, 2018.  Copyright James Willmus 2018.
I'll be the first to admit, BNSF can sometimes bore me.  I love to see switching action, branchline services, and smaller railroads but these big class I railroads mostly just run unit trains from one end of the line to the other.  Of course, if you like to operate long trains that run for hours at a time, this is certainly an excellent prototype.  The exception to my preference is when trains are running in unique settings, just like what we see in the photo above.

BNSF units 7318, 6862, and 6829 are fueling up in Missoula Yard on an Eastbound siding.  This train is still connected and I imagine the engine at the other end of the train (which there usually is on BNSF unit trains) is being fueled by a separate station or by a truck.  Night photographs give off a completely different atmosphere compared to their daytime counterparts.  Beyond the well-lit perimeter is the highway and old houses from the 1920's.  Not too scenic if you ask me.  But with a dark backdrop, the bright orange of the locomotives are allowed to shine.  If I were to model BNSF, this is how I would do it, personal scenes at night, or in a blizzard, or in some dramatic setting.  Such a theme would favor a shelf layout design.

Anyways, on to the specifics of the photograph.  I could not use my tripod as there was a chain link fence between the street I was parked on and the railroad tracks (and for good reason, no need to have kids or foamers roaming about the rail yard.  In order to take this photograph I had to hand-hold the camera over the fence and let the lens rest on the metal railing running across the top of the fence.  Combined with a solid optical stabilization, my Sigma 17-50mm was up to the task of taking a steady photo while handheld in this manner.  My settings were 35mm at ISO 640, f/4, 1/4second.

This again proves you don't need a tripod if you are resourceful and well practiced with your equipment.  If I were to take this photo again, the only mistake I made was letting the switch stand get in the way of the nose logo on #7318.  10 feet left or right would have put the switch stand in a less obnoxious spot.  Thankfully this is an easy spot to photograph so I plan to go back when the snow starts to fly.

Anyways, that's all I have for #002 in my "Photo of the Week" series!

--James Willmus