Well, I had to run into Willimantic last night to run a last minute errand. This was about 8pm, so usually the two New England Central jobs are in town working – one turn out of Palmer working the P&W interchange, and the south end switcher out of South Windham getting ready to work the customers south of Willimantic. As I headed down Route 289 towards Willimantic, I turned the scanner on and heard some chatter on the NECR channel. Just as it was supposed to be, the two NECR jobs sounded like they were working around the yard. A quick glance into my backseat confirmed my recollection – my Lumedyne was sitting in the back seat. Luckily CVS was open until 10pm…
I first tried a couple shots near Bridge Street, setting up the Lumedyne on a stand, about 7 feet in the air, and triggering it with an optical slave. I put my 420EX on the camera, using that mainly to trigger the Lumedyne. Took a couple test shots of the passing train.
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8116] [cpg_imagefixthumb:8115]Not too bad. I tried one of the power going past, but the Scotchlite strips screwed up the flash response – got to work on that… But that’s not the interesting thing. That came over the radio.
Now normally, Providence & Worcester train NR-4 – the job responsible for interchanging with the NECR in Willimantic – has typically been on duty in Plainfield at 8pm, and they make their run overnight. Well here it is a little after 8pm and I hear what sounds like a familiar voice over the scanner, saying that NR-4 is moving into the yard. Not sure if the move is temporary, or a permanent schedule change, but NR-4 was heading into town, and Rod was on the job. So I packed up and took a ride down Pleasant Street to try a shot from the sidewalk south of the Frog Bridge.
I got there, parked, and grabbed my gear. As I was walking up Pleasant Street, I saw the glow of NR-4s headlights in the distance. A quick set up, including a pretty much blind focusing job, and I was ready for NR-4 to come into my frame. It was the same setup as Bridge Street – the 420EX on the camera, and the Lumedyne running on the slave. Well, I fired off this shot of the train pulling down the NECR main, out of the darkness.
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8114]Yeah, the shot isn’t exactly magazine material – the focus is off, and the shutter speed was a little slow (only 1/100s), but it’s a starting point. Hey, this was a completely off the cuff experiment, and quite the learning experience. Now to build on this, and hopefully do a bit better next time…
Thanks for looking!
Tom
