![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nanosphoto.com\/gallery\/albums\/userpics\/10001\/thumb_20090310-_MG_2776.jpg?resize=150%2C100\")
Took advantage of the sunshine this morning, hoping to catch Providence & Worcester train NR-2 on my walk.\u00a0 This time I decided to mix things up a bit, and head a little further north to Stoddard Hill Park on the north side of Ledyard.\u00a0 Well, things didn’t go as planned, but they did end up working out OK.\u00a0 Even if one of my pieces of electronic equipment went for a swim.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Well, I got out a bit later than usual, but not by much, so I figured I’d be able to catch NR-2 somewhere along the Thames on their southbound trip.\u00a0 As I headed past Mill Cove, the scanner was still silent.\u00a0 Hmmm, NR-2 must be running late.\u00a0 So I figured I’d head north and see what the angles at Stoddard Hill looked like.<\/p>\n
I got there and was greeted by a glass like Stoddard Cove.\u00a0 OK, this should work.\u00a0 So I grabbed the scanner and cameras and headed trackside. While gathering my gear, the scanner woke up with the Worcester dispatcher acknowledging no defects for NR-3 at the Jewett City detector.\u00a0 NR-3?\u00a0 Hmmm, that must mean NR-2 is close by.\u00a0 The question was, were they really early and I missed them?\u00a0 Maybe I could get an answer from the rails.\u00a0 When I got to the tracks, I noticed that the rails had some nice frost on them, some of which was being melted by the morning sunshine.<\/p>\n[cpg_imagefixthumb:8574] [cpg_imagefixthumb:8573] [cpg_imagefixthumb:8572]\n
With the fragile frost on the rails, I knew for sure that NR-2 hadn’t been by yet.\u00a0 And with NR-3 closing in on Norwich, they had to be close.<\/p>\n
While waiting, I got a brilliant idea – I had recently modified one of my radio remote triggers for my flashes to trigger my camera.\u00a0 So I grabbed my tripod and headed back out to the tracks.\u00a0 This time, I hiked to the south end of Stoddard Cove to get a shot of the train coming at me.\u00a0 I figured with the remote, I could literally be in two places at once – getting a tight telephoto shot of the train approaching, followed by a wide shot further out from the tracks, also getting a nice reflection in the water.<\/p>\n
I got out there and picked my two spots, setting\u00a0 up the 20D on a tripod right next to the water with the wide angle lens.\u00a0 Hooked everything up, and moved to the spot I wanted to get the telephoto near the tracks – about 30 feet from the camera.\u00a0 From there, I tested the remote trigger – worked flawlessly!<\/p>\n
Just then, I heard horns to the north – could this finally be NR-2?\u00a0 Nothing on the radio, so I guess I’ll just have to wait.<\/p>\n
While waiting, I went over to the 20D, and wanted to see what it would look like if I fully extended the center column on the tripod, giving the shot a bit of a higher angle.\u00a0 Well, I just should have left well enough alone.\u00a0 While raising the camera, the remote trigger came off of the cable, and slid right into the water!\u00a0 Yep, fully submerged…\u00a0 As I scrambled to grab it, I knocked the tripod over with the 20D on it!\u00a0 Thankfully, that landed in the leaves, and not the water.\u00a0 But the remote was toast, as was my dual angle idea.\u00a0 Oh, well.\u00a0 Time to refigure.<\/p>\n
While looking around, something caught my eye across the tracks.\u00a0 There’s a little hill just on the other side of the tracks here, and if I stood on one of the rocks, I think the angle from the shadow side would work out well.\u00a0 So I headed over there to check things out.<\/p>\n
As I was assessing things, a trio of headlights came into view north of the Mohegan-Pequot bridge to the north.\u00a0 Here comes NR-2!\u00a0 Or so I thought…<\/p>\n
Liking the angle on the hillside, I waited for the train to come into view.\u00a0 Soon after that, they rolled along the Thames in Preston through a clearing.<\/p>\n[cpg_imagefixthumb:8571] [cpg_imagefixthumb:8570]\n
Then into Ledyard<\/p>\n[cpg_imagefixthumb:8569]\n
And finally into view of my two cameras – this time with the 20D on telephoto duty, and the 40D getting the wide.<\/p>\n[cpg_imagefixthumb:8568] [cpg_imagefixthumb:8567]\n
Then the tail end rolled past<\/p>\n[cpg_imagefixthumb:8566]\n
But that wasn’t it.\u00a0 As the train rolled out of view, the scanner woke up – it was NR-3 reporting that they were arriving at Dow.\u00a0 I guess that means that NR-2 didn’t run today.\u00a0 Odd that it would happen on a Tuesday…with the frost on the rails, and the lack of wind, I doubt they did run earlier than normal.\u00a0 But, hey, I’ve been wrong before.<\/p>\n
After that, I made my way back to the truck, and to the office for the remainder of the day.<\/p>\n
Oh, yeah, and after pulling the remote apart, drying everything off, and giving it some fresh batteries, it works just fine!<\/p>\n
Thanks for looking!
\nTom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Took advantage of the sunshine this morning, hoping to catch Providence & Worcester train NR-2 on my walk.\u00a0 This time I decided to mix things up a bit, and head a little further north to Stoddard Hill Park on the north side of Ledyard.\u00a0 Well, things didn’t go as planned, but they did end up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14,21,199,8,89,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-rail_photography","7":"tag-connecticut","8":"tag-ledyard","9":"tag-nr-3","10":"tag-providence-worcester","11":"tag-stoddard-cove","12":"tag-thames-river","13":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}