Railfans with Drones

Trains Magazine
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Increasingly, it has been observed that drones have been used in railroad photography. Not only could a train be struck by a wildly flown drone but in popular beach areas police helicopters or sightseer choppers could have an unpleasant encounter with a railfan drone. It is unknown if a drone could bring a helicopter down, but some helicopters are super light. It is only a matter of time before we all find out, but getting the subject out in the open may prevent a tragedy of sorts.

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Most consumer drones are very not heavy. If a train hits it, you’re just going to need a new drone.

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Drones are good for Catching trains, especially in spots that are hard to reach, or they work really well for pictures, the high above ground shots are the really cool thing about drones :wink:

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Yep, I know quite a few railfan youtubers do videos that way and they get amazing shots following trains and exploring stuff like around factories and yards. It’s much different than back in the day when you had some lame-o contorting himself to get the last possible wedgie shot of the locomotives because God forbid a freight car or two sneak into the picture. Don’t miss those days at all!

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I can name one who uses them quite a bit

Cowl Unit Productions

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I think he’s here on the Forum

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I wouldn’t say they were lame. They did have pretty high standards. I’ve worked with some serious roster shooters. I was never much of a photog (I only ever dabbled), but to this day I can’t see a publicity shot done on an engine without shaking my head at some of the sloppiness of having hoses untucked, or mirror folded in, or chains down
 stuff I picked up from them.

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Drones make overhead shots of roofs on freight cars and engines. I would think that would help modelers with more realistic weathering.

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Most of the drone photos I’ve seen of late are high up aerials. A few of them and the novelty quickly wears off. A drone aerial shot at 100 feet to the side and above a moving locomotive would be neat to see, but the practicality of taking such shots is questionable at best.

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That’s true with most anything.

I don’t know how 100’ is questionable.

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There’s nothing to question at any height, just to the point where a train is a dot, then it’s questionable on how you managed to get a drone that high in an active airspace and haven’t gotten arrested :expressionless_face:

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Commercial drone operation is regulated under 14 CFR 107:

This is the procedure you follow for part 107 registration as a ‘Remote Pilot’

https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/become_a_drone_pilot

This permits flight ‘at night and over buildings and people’.

(You can of course find 14 CFR 107 in the eCFR, but apparently “due to aggressive scraping” you can no longer paste references to eCFR into posts without ‘registering your IP address’ as a developer every 3 months
 using a captcha that does not resolve on a phone. Sigh.)

There is a system allowing coordination between other aircraft and drones: LAANCS. I wonder how many of the drone pilots making YouTube videos are in compliance.

https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/laanc#:~:text=How%20and%20when%20can%20drone,the%20exception%20for%20Recreational%20Flyers.

There is also a somewhat cringe-named system that lets ‘recreational’ drone pilots know where they can and can’t fly:

https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/b4ufly

There is a hard limit of 400’ above terrain for remotely-piloted aircraft; this includes RC model aircraft. There has been discussion about how this rule ‘ought’ to apply to vehicles with onboard cameras and inherent dynamic stabilization.

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Since light aircraft are supposed to maintain at least a 500’ separation from occupied buildings, the 400’ limit may have been set to keep drones out of airspace occupied by manned aircraft. Since manned aircraft typically fly faster than drones, the drones would need 360Âș visual coverage to be effective as the drones are usually too small to be seen by pilots.

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That was certainly the logic for RC and free-flight model aircraft.

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Part of the widespread problem may be that drones camera lenses tend to be wide angle! As I recall, 2-1/4 film cameras were 80mm as normal, and 35m cameras had 55mm as normal. BUT the TRUE normal was 150mm and 105mm respectively, and were the way ones’ eyes saw the scene.

So, a drone 100 feet above a train would sort of yield it as somewhat microscopic!
Thus, a ‘true’ drone professional photographer would have an assortment of lenses! I don’t think too many railfan photographers are into it to that degree 


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Usually the ‘cheap’ way to go is get an expensive drone without a camera and get a GoPro :rofl:

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Did a drone hurt you?

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You may find this valuable:

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Zoom lenses work quite well within a range.

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As we learned in the American Airline DoD helicopter crash over the Potomac River on the approach to Reagan National Airport - the allowed height of the helicopter was 200 feet, and air liner was descending through 500 feet on its approach path - the helicopter was actually at 375 and the two collided.

Of course this area is verboten for civilian drone operation and there is railroad operation within this general area.

Just like anything else - there are drone photogs that can generate admirable pictures/videos and there are some who can not.

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There’s a youtube drone photographer named dj’s trains out of Pittsburgh. He is also an engineer for CSX. He posts some great shots. Drones are for action or landscape shots, not roster shots. What railfanning has to do with beaches and helicopters, I have no idea