Sunny day on the rails

OK, to contrast Friday’s rainy day on the rails, the weather cooperated on Saturday. I attended a photo charter on the Catskill Mountain Railroad in Kingston, New York. The railroad recently reactivated, with the help of a virtual army of volunteers, about a mile long section of track within Kingston. Otto Vondrak, a CMRR volunteer, as well as an admin over at Railroad.net, put together a photo charter to raise some funds for the railroad, and had extended me the invitation. How could I pass this up? So I sent my check in, and made the 3 hour trip into the Catskill Mountains for the day. Short version – it was well worth the money and drive!

I joined a gaggle of photographers from around the northeast for an afternoon of railroad photography. Since this was a charter, the train and crew were quite literally at our beck and call. Bring it forward a half car length, not a problem. Set it up under that bridge, sure thing. A fun day for sure.

The train was powered by a restored Alco RS-1, which was pulling a flat car and a caboose. The day went like this: We got there around noon, and after introductions and the safety meeting, the railroad took us for a ride along the trackage. This gave us a chance to check out the photo locations along the way, as well as burn up some of the high noon light. Once we got back to the Cornell Street yard, we got off of the train, and did a more traditional chase of the train. Once we hit all of our spots along the way, we came back and had one more ride in the caboose to wrap up the day.

We did have one unexpected bonus – as most of you know all too well, Alcos are famous for belching out smoke. Well, after one of our photo spots under I-587, the train started moving, and let out a good column of dark smoke. Well it seems that someone thought the bridge was on fire, and called the fire department. So we did get a visit from the FD, but Otto got them to pose their truck with the train for a shot.

Thanks to Otto for putting this together, thanks to the volunteers for rehabilitating the line, and a huge thanks to the Catskill Mountain Railroad for opening their doors, and train, to a group of photographers. I know I had a great day, and talking with the others on the trip, the feeling was mutual.  Here’s my favorite shot from the day – the train approaching milepost K4 at Kingston Plaza:

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And here’s the shots from the entire day. Click on the thumbnail to go to the shot, or hit the link at the bottom of the list to go to the gallery. There’s 99 photos in there in all.

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Thanks for looking!
Tom