Midnight Moonshine Extra

Last Friday night the last cut of 40 ethanol cars made their way into Palmer, MA on the New England Central Railroad where a fresh crew picked them up for the trip south to New London, CT (for a look back at the previous 40 cars, click here and here).  The Providence & Worcester Railroad would then pick up the cars on Saturday for the trip to Providence.  Here’s a quick look at the train as they made their way south on the NECR between Monson, MA and Willimantic, CT.

Friday evening I made my way out to do a little night shooting of the Moonshine Extra as they made their way towards New London, CT.  I managed to shoot them at a few spots along the way – Monson, MA, Stafford Springs, Mansfield Depot, Mansfield, and Willimantic, CT.  This trip was mostly a learning experience – mostly learning to check everything before the train gets there!  Overall the shots came out pretty good, but as always, there’s room for improvement.  OK, enough of that, here’s the shots from the evening.

First up was pretty much a grab shot at Monson, MA near the Lydall warehouse.  I got up to Palmer just as the train was heading south out of the yard, so I didn’t have much time to set up in this spot.  Lighting was only the Lumedyne, and it was shot with the 50D/Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX.  Came out OK, but not the greatest.

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Next on my list was a shot in Stafford Springs, CT – I figured that was far enough south to give me a big enough lead on the train to set up my flashes.  But as I was heading south, I changed my mind a bit.  Originally I was aiming to shoot at the river in the middle of town, but with the races getting out, I figured traffic would be pretty heavy around there.  So instead I decided to break out the GPS and find the cemetery along the tracks that I had been talking to another photographer about.  Well, I finally found it, and made my way to the crossing, where I set this next shot up.  Only problem is for some reason the second flash didn’t fire, so this was lit by only the Lumedyne again, and instead of the telephoto, it was shot with the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX.  Only beef with this one, other than the flashes, was the placement of the tall memorial – it’s covering the lead truck of the SD40.

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From there, I figured my next best bet would be somewhere around Mansfield Depot.  When I got there, I decided on a shot at the Depot Road crossing, again using two lights.  A pretty vanilla composition, but at least this time both lights went off.

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With that in the bag, the gear went back into the trunk and I headed towards Willimantic.  Of course, I changed my mind again.  I decided to pull down Cider Mill Road near the Mansfield Drive In to check out the crossing there.  My wife & I were talking about the shot looking down the bridge over the Willimantic River at a broadside shot of the crossing, and I figured it might look pretty nice at night.  Once I got there, I had an idea to do something quite a bit different.  I set up the Lumedyne near the crossing to illuminate the train & crossing signal, the Norman behind me to light up a bit of the bridge, and I stood in the middle of the bridge for the shot.  Basically I was going for a streetlight effect over the crossing as the train entered, with the rest of the frame mostly dark, but some details showing on the wood guardrails over the bridge.  Well, here’s the result – I only managed to set up one of the two heads on the Norman, so it was working at half power, but I think it came out pretty nice.

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After that shot, it was off to Willimantic, where I managed to get one shot of the train near Bridge Street as they headpinned their train there to swap power (6-axle power isn’t allowed south of Willimantic, so they had to grab a pair of P&W GEs that were waiting in the yard for them).  Pretty simple shot here – the train is stationary, so it’s a longer exposure, with a few pops from the Lumedyne to give a little more details.

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And that was it for the evening…well, early morning at this point.  From there, the train continued south to New London where the P&W would pick it up the following morning, and I headed home to bed.

Thanks for looking!
Tom