Today I took Jill and we made a trip north to Stuart, FL to spend the morning to hopefully catch a few trains crossing the drawbridge. I did end up catching three trains after a few hours wait, but also had a scare. As the first train came across the bridge, my camera let out an odd, and quite loud thunk, and locked up with the dreaded flashing Err 99. Fellow Canon shooters know that Error 99 isn’t always a bad thing, but sometimes it can be quite bad, especially if the camera doesn’t turn off. Well, it didn’t turn off, so I quickly went into panic mode.
We got to the Stuart drawbridge just after dawn and saw only an open drawbridge. So of course I got a shot of it.
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Then we waited. And waited. For an hour and 10 minutes, then the bridge dropped into position for rail traffic. A quick look at the signals on the south side of the bridge showed me that a southbound was coming. So I got into position near the approach to the bridge to get a long telephoto shot of the train coming across the draw.
A few minutes later, I could hear horns to the north – here they come. Not long after the horns, FEC train 109 came into sight at the north end of the bridge. So I started shooting – the first shot was of the train coming across the drawbridge span
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Then I switched to a vertical framing to get the train coming across the bridge. I started getting a series of shots of the train rolling towards me, and the third frame sounded odd – there was some more sounds, other than the crisp snap of the shutter and mirrors moving inside the SLR. There was a loud thunk too. Then a flashing Err99 in the viewfinder and on the top LCD. No big deal – usually shutting the camera off and turning it back on fixes it. Well, when I turned the camera off, it kept flashing Err99. Damn, that’s not a good thing. More on that in a second. Here’s the two shots I got – take note of the smudging of the headlghts. Remember that for later.
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With 109 rolling past me, I started to further investigate what when wrong. The only way to clear it was to remove the batteries for a bit and restart it. It came back up like normal. I took a couple test shots, and everything appeared to be OK. Was my shutter going? Supposedly 20D shutters are good for about 50,000 frames – I’m pushing 90,000 so I guess it’s possible. Hmmm, odd, but still troubling. 20 or 30 test shots without issue – just churning away. Glad I brought my G9 as a backup, just in case…
Just then I heard horns again to the north – here comes another southbound. Maybe it was the local out of Fort Pierce – train 920. So I made my way back down to the river, still trying to figure out what went wrong. Maybe something was in the mirror box? Who knows. So I popped the lens off to check out if there’s any dust on the rear element. I saw a couple small pieces, but nothing major. So I blew them off. They came off, but my breath fogged the glass – but that caused me to look further – what was that in the middle of the rear element? A fingerprint! So that’s what caused it – it all made sense now. The fingerprint blurred the image just enough to not only blur the headlights, but to confuse the hell out of the autofocus sensor. It thought it was in focus, but at the same time it thought it was out of focus. So it hunted around for a bit and just gave up when it didn’t know how to interpret what it was “seeing.” A quick wipe with the lens cloth, and I figured I was in business again. And just in time.
It was the local, powered by a single GP40-2, with a short cut of cars, coming across the bridge.
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Since they weren’t tearing across the bridge, I was able to switch to the wide angle, and get a shot of them approaching me
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Not too bad – now that the camera is functioning properly.
Listening to the scanner, train 202 was to the south, and once 920 cleared the main, they would head north and over the bridge. About 10 minutes later, the drawbridge began to drop.
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And a few minutes after that 202, powered by one of the FECs new SD70s, comes onto the causeway leading to the drawbridge
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Then as they crossed the drawbridge, I noticed a small fishing boat heading out towards the ocean
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Now for the fun part – trying to change lenses in a 20 MPH wind, and getting it done in time to catch both the boat and the train’s power in the same frame. Just in time…
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Got another shot of the boat and SD70 – this time a little more subtle.
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Then the trailing SD40 amongst the boats
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And finally one that struck me – the last car on the train, an empty autorack, was from the Canadian National. Here we are in south central Florida – about as far from Canada as you can get. The manatee sign below the car just iced the shot for me.
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At that point we called it a day. Not a bad take, despite the little hardware scare.
Thanks for looking!
Tom
