Success with RailPictures.Net

I’ve read in several blogs that to get a photo on RailPictures.Net can be pretty frustrating at times. What you might think is a great photo is not to them.

I had submitted a few of some NBEC trains when I was on holidays in Bathurst, New Brunswick back in July, but they were rejected. I mainly blame my lack of experience and knowledge of photography and usage with camera settings.

About 4 days ago, I submitted a couple of my CPR 2816 pictures I had taken during an outing in October to RailPictures.Net. To my happy surprise, one of them made it on the site. I guess the only you can do is to keep trying.

You can find picture here.

Cheers,

Man + Hooch = Flying Car vs Train

On Monday October 29, 2007, some hooch filled dillweed launched his car into the air and hit a CN Train here in Calgary. I guess he was 3 sheets to the wind while flying his car at a buck 40! ($1.40 = 140 KPH). Apparently he was so supple from all the hooch that he came out of the whole incident with only minor injuries.

Here’s a link to some pictures by various photographers that I found on Railroad Picture Archives of CN 5955 that was hit by the car. I also found 5 picture on RailPictures.net. Here are the ID tags for those pictures: 172255, 154486, 147731, 90443, 30286.

Here are two newspaper clippings. The first one is from the Calgary Herald and the second is from the Calgary Sun.

Google Earth kmz file.

Cheers,

Blog Extras

Just a little info about what I plan to add with some of the posts on this blog.

Typically there are 2 ingredients to a railfan’s posts. The first is the write up, and the second of course is pictures of trains and other related subjects. I would like to add a third element to help convey my adventures. At the end of each post I’ll be adding a link to a “.kmz” file to load into Google Earth.

What to expect when the file is loaded. The files will usually contain several paths of my travels from one location to another and some placemarks depicting various locations that I’ve scouted and taken photos from along with other points of interest. Some of the placemarks may at times contain some comments.

Cheers,

Introduction

Welcome to my blog!

This blog is about my railfanning excursions and trains & railroads in Alberta, or east of the Rockies for that matter.

How did the name come about? Well, I was at a grade crossing on a dirt road in Carseland waiting for CPR's Empress 2816 steam train to arrive, which I will post about later, and some of the locals kept driving by making it very dusty. It was a thought in the back of my mind that I wanted to create a blog or website of my adventures. That's when it hit me as I was standing in the middle of a dust cloud. Dust in the air, tracks on the ground, dust in the air settling on the tracks on the ground. Dust on the Tracks. And of course I live east of the Rockies in a town called Turner Valley. As for the two periods in between the two phrases, call it artistic expression if you want, I just felt like putting them there and because I can.

Since I currently don't own any camera equipment of my own except for a 2 mpx point and shoot, my posts will probably be few and far apart. At least until I am able to get my hands on a camera of my own. The camera that I get to use on occasion is borrowed from a family member. I'll talk about the camera gear another time in another post.

Cheers.