New Photos of 261

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Knowing that Milwaukee Road 261 would be returning from its midwest tour this evening, I thought it would be fun to try to chase it as it came into the Twin Cities from Lacross. So Big Girl and I jumped in the truck and headed down to Hastings. Hastings is right on the Mississippi River, and is the last town on the ex Milwaukee main before it goes to joint trackage with the BNSF. I expected the train to take the CP tracks from Lacross. WRONG!!!

As we were standing there, we heard a whistle on the other side of the river. We hurried back to the truck, and took off. Big Girl had never seen me drive like that, I was on a mission. I wanted to catch up with it, and get ahead of it before it got to Newport, just south of St Paul.

Flying up US 61at 70+ MPH we reached Newport ahead of the train, but as we waited to make a left turn and cross the tracks, we looked and saw a slow intermodal train creaping along the near track, and blocking the two remaining grade crossings. 261 came through Newport at over 70 MPH just as the light turned green for me to turn left.

Cursing, I made a U turn and waited at the light to make a left back onto the highway heading north. A few minutes later, we had caught up again. By this time 261 had slowed to about 30 MPH and we were able to get ahead again. One last stoplight, and another left onto Warner Road.

I told Big Girl to get ready with the camera, as I tried to time our crossing of the sweeping curved overpass just as the train went under. Very close, but not quite. As we came down from the overpass, there she was and I told Big Girl to just keep shooting, we could sort it all out later.

Actually, we were lucky that we weren’t set up at Newport. If we had been where I wanted to be, we would have gotten one or two shots at the most, as 261 FLEW past. Then we would have been trapped by the intermodal. We found out later that the intermodal did that deliberately to secure the grade crossings, so 261 could go through wide

2

Those are fine shots; with that deep black paint 261 is not an easy locomotive to photograph. I did some similar hair raising driving last fall along the Mississippi as the 261 ran excursions from the Twin Cities to LaCrosse and back.
All of us steam chasers have done some driving we are not real proud of – I was chasing 261 from Mendota IL to Galesburg to Henderson to Alpha (all in Illinois) last week and I can only wonder what the civilian drivers made of the caravan of cars racing up the county highways at absurd speeds, with far too little space between cars, with cars dashing off the road in hopes of finding a grade crossing for that perfect picture.
Dave Nelson

3

Cool photos! 261is a great steam loco! Sounds like you had quite a time getting those photos.

Willy

4

…The dangerous effort produced nice photos…rare ones.

5

Well it wasn’t THAT dangerous. As much as I wanted to see the train, I did focus on the road, perhaps more so than normal because of the speed. We weren’t going that much over the limit, since my poor old '93 GMC pickup isn’t capable of much more than that.

At least we didn’t hit anything.[;)][;)]

The lighting was very cooperative. These were taken around 7:30 as the sun was getting lower. The top two shots really caught the drivers nicely. Big Girl did great for a first attempt.[:X][:X][:X][^][swg]

By the way, we weren’t the only ones speeding. The speed limit on the rails through Newport was 60, but we heard on the radio that they were given the OK to open her up through there, with the intermodal running interference.[:p]

6

First, great shots, Elliot!

Next, Dave Nelson, you went through the “Big A”? (Alpha, IL that is.) That’s were I grew up. Hope you didn’t blink when you passed through town or you may have missed it. [:D]

I hope you enjoyed your 30 second visit to Alpha. [8D]

Bergie

7

Big_Boy_4005,

Those are excellent shots!!!

8

I’m not trying to be critical as such and I’ve done similar stunts in the past but with many people probably trying to do similar runs and their attention scattered between driving and the interest at hand…It probably wasn’t the safest run to make.

9

That 261 is a beautiful locomotive, and those are some awsome shots!

I like the bell up front.

Nothing Beats Live Steam, it’s been an amazing summer so far!

10

Actually, it was fairly quiet on the road. Only a few cars chasing, maybe half a dozen at the most. It was a good time to be trying. I suspect that a bunch of people got trapped back at Newport, which made it much easier.

On this stretch of track the road is not a good vantage point as the tracks are 30 feet below and too close to get any kind of view. We have lots of pictures of dirty windshield and blurry trees mixed in with these good ones.[swg]

I understand what you mean though, and I’m not trying to be defensive. I don’t usually do this kind of thing. It sure helps to have a designated driver though.

This morning we went over to the hobby store, and then to lunch at a Chineese restaurant at the old St Paul Union Depot. At both stops people were asking about 261. People can smell steam miles away!!![:D][^]

11

If you ride on Friday, then we should expect more photos on Sat?
Cool.
Tell your lady to keep shooting, she does good…

Ed

12

I’ll try and post them Friday night Ed, but we want to get moving early Saturday to get some pics of the doublehead with CP 2816 in the morning. Now that will be a zoo. The roads may be jammed with chasers. On the other hand maybe all the railfans will be riding the train. I should be so lucky.[swg]

13

…Big Boy…Further comment: The green trees for background and the sunlight on them was a combination one could only wish for…Makes a very artful background.

14

Thanks Model, I’ve always loved the way my little Kodak camera captured all of the colors. Those greens are like Kodachrome film. Green is my favorite color. I wish BNSF hadn’t changed. All of that greenery that you are seeing in those shots, is scrub trees growing out of the bluff face. This is Hoffman Avenue / Dayton’s Bluff, the best train watching hot spot in the Twin Cities.

This photo is more of an overview of the area, you can see the bluff better.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, the top photo of 261 above was slightly doctored. The train was fine, but even with cropping I couldn’t get rid of all of the truck’s window frame. I’m getting pretty good with the photo editing software. I copied a chunk of trees to cover the spot. Here is the original.

Cropping took the mirror out at the bottom, but I didn’t want to lose any of the smoke, and I couldn’t stand to see the truck in the upper left corner, so those trees made for a wonderful fix. It isn’t as if the trees aren’t there. If I hadn’t confessed, would you have known? The third photo has an even bigger repair. Click on it to enlarge it and see if you can find it. Magicians aren’t supposed to divulge their secrets. But I’m not a magician.[swg]

This is part of the power of digital photography!!! EASY artistic control. This would have ben very difficult the old fashioned way.

15

THANKS ED!!!

I had my face plastered to the camera clicking away as fast as I could. The whole time I was praying for just one good shot for Big Boy!![:D]

16

Ok…I’ll take a shot at guessing on the 3rd pic repair…I see something above the front of the 2nd tender that looks a bit suspicious. On your Union Pacific engines photo…that is a good shot…It is a busy picture. Has lots of stuff to look at…All kinds of things happening…including what looks like building a new switch.
I understand how much one can “repair” photos with the software of various systems…I used to do the same with the pic’s I scanned on my scanner and then I purchased a new computer and it’s [the scanner], software only went to Wind 98 and this one has XP and I’ve never succeeded in getting that feature back working again even though I sent for a new CD to install a new driver to work with the XP…Frustrating…

17

You are on the right track Model, the problem was bigger than that. There was a street lamp there. Fortunately, it was only on the second tender, and the detail in that part of the train was minimal. The background wasn’t as important so I didn’t spend as much time on that. The pole was fairly easy to remove. I just copied a narrow strip right next to pole and placed it over the pole. The most obvious problem is in the tall grass, I didn’t mess with that at all after the first pass.

The other two shots had only minimal cropping. As for the UP diesels, I like that shot a lot. All of the vivid colors and the action are just fun to look at. That was taken a little over a month ago. They were indeed building a switch. It was the third of four, you can see the other two in the background. They quickly built the fourth, and installed them all the weekend after Memorial Day.

18

Keep praying, it seems to work for you!
Nice shot, even without Elliot’s fixes…
It gets habit forming though…[:D]

Am looking forward to what you guys come up with friday/sat…
Ed