Trackside with Trains.com, vol. 135, is now live. Six photographers submitted images based on this round’s theme, “clouds.”
View the images and vote for your favorite. Then come back and share your feedback about the images.
…Yes, Kathi’s, hands down…and Elrond’s a close second.
Kathi’s really qualifies to the theme of “clouds”. And she certainly thought of the 3rds rule…
Usually it takes a while to decide if any of the pix cover the theme…but this time they all did and they all did it well. Steve’s does it in the most unique fashion. The telephone pole cross bucks and insulators catches they eye but the real gem of this pic, and all the others, is the clear semaphore haloed by a patch of clear sky! There are lots of clouds and lots of locomotives, but so few chances for a shot like this!
Toss up between Steve, Kathi and Elrond, but Elrond’s brought more emotional content…you can feel the power building in the clouds.
Elrond’s shot at first didn’t really strike me…but the more I looked at it…wow. Great job!
Drew’s shot was nice, but it looked like it could have benefited from a polarizer (the sky was too washed out). But Ireally liked the composition.
Andy’s shot was really nice as well, but the colors seem ‘off’ to me.
While I appreciated Steve’s artistic and historic efforts, it did not have much emotional impact on me.
Alex’s image was quite interesting, and it would surely be a winner in a contest where ‘clouds’ was not the theme. While I understand that the steam locomotive is creating clouds (of exhaust), when I think of clouds I think of those generated by atmospheric forces. But I really like the image.
It took me quite a while to decide between Elrond’s storm clouds or Kathi’s river shot. Certainly there are more clouds in Kathi’s shot, but they are not as dramatic as Elrond’s clouds. However, I’m not a big fan of ‘portrait’ style scenery shots (unless I’m shooting for a magazine cover). And if one choses to use vertical composition, then the theme of the photo should not be cut off at the top (or bottom), which, unfortunately Elrond’s does. If he had zoomed out a bit more and had showed the top of the cloud, it would have been my pick.
Kathi’s shot seems to have it all in regards to this week’s theme. Vote: Kathi.
I went for Drew’s shot, partly because of the illusion of “smoke” from the lead locomotive.
Steve’s shot was hot on its tail, however.
Kathy and Elrond also had excellent shots, though I thought the clouds rather overwhelmed Elrond’s image.
Alex again comes in with a nice shot of steam in the snow, but it just didn’t so it for me.
Wow! Not a bad shot in the bunch. Oops, that didn’t come out quite right–I don’t think there’s ever a bad shot in the bunch. But this time, they’re all worthy contenders. Some of those clouds look pretty intimidating, but Kat’s just looked pretty. So I have her my vote. The colors below the horizon didn’t hurt, either.
P.S. Pat just had a look at them, without any encouragement from me. Again, they all got good reactions, but the most enthusiastic was for Kathi’s. “Lots of texture”. That’s from a quilter, who works a bit with texture/textile. Can’t argue with that–wouldn’t want to.
I really like Elrond’s photo and it is one of my favorites of Trackside. In an overall sense I think his photo was best in this competition. However I voted for Kathi’s, because I thought it best represented the theme of a train photo accentuating clouds in the photo.
This comes down to pretty basic choices - we got trains, we got clouds. Who’s got the prettiest combination.
We’ve got Drew’s: train, cloud and blowing young corn field.
We’ve got Andy’s: train, grassy meadow, rolling hillocks, and cloud shot.
Andy up by one item.
We’ve got Steve’s: semaphore, telephone line, and broken cloud shot.
No train - lost a point.
We’re got Kathi’s: train, shrub brush, thick trees, clouds, and ROUGH WATER!
The “water” begins to edge her out in front a bit.
With Elrond, we get train, signal, lonnnnng rails and three color clouds!
Five illuminated lights have to be worth some extra points.
With Alex we get train, smoke, steam, clouds and . . . SNOW!
I’M SO SICK OF SNOW!
O gads. It’s almost another RED train, at that.
But it is kind of pretty.
eenie, meenie, minee, mo . . .
I’m going with Elrond.
I like the layering of the cloud formations in Kathi’s photo-She gets my vote
All photos depicted clouds very well. It was kind of like put them in a hat situation and pick one out to vote. I had to go back over the photos several times before one stood out from the rest. I ended up voting for Elrond’s.
These were the best photo’s in one of these competitions in quite a while. They are all beautiful shots.
A shot like Steve’s, of a semaphore signal, strike deep into the heart of the “AgentKid” in me. I saw my father work them more times than can be counted.
Alex’s and Kathi’s photo’s are the kind that Christmas Card and Calendar makers respectively, pin their yearly income hopes on.
I voted for Elrond’s photo. The colours were so spectacular.
Bruce
Re the semaphore photo, the accompanying text is in error. Lower quadrant semaphores failed to the stop (horizontal) position due to the weight of the casting holding the colored lenses being greater than the weight of the semaphore blade.
Don M.
CLOUDS in the sky …CLOUDS of steam…CLOUDS of smoke…hey, it just doesn’t get much cloudier that that.
Thanks Alex…you got my vote this week.
I really liked all of the entries, but this one said “WINNER” to me.
TJB - Nashville, TN
All did a nice job meeting the goals of the theme. Looks like the popular vote is tracking the way I saw it, Alex Mayes leading with Kathi a close second.
Elrond’s is nice too, however, I feel his shot is closer to a “Storm Light” theme than a basic “Clouds” theme.
Jay
I’ve waited several days to write this post to give everyone who wanted to, a chance to comment on the wonderful photo’s this week. But I did want to write about a bit of railway trivia that could be lost if it isn’t written down somewhere. This would be more appropriate for a thread on the Classic Trains forum, but here goes.
Semaphore arms would fail to the horizontal position about 360 days or so a year, but there was one condition where a couple of days a year that would not be the case. In stations not open 24 hrs a day and manned only with a Station Agent, one of his first duties before opening up to serve the public was to lower and raise each semaphore arm once to ensure they were both operable.
These arms were operated by the Agent using a wire cable from the office to the arm. The arm was held vertically by tension caused by the weight of the arm and kept in place using a a steel loop on the end of the cable held with a hook on the wall.
There would be times when it would start to snow in the early evening with a rain/snow mix or very wet snow and then overnight the temperature would fall significantly. This would cause the cable to freeze to the pulleys and guides and would prevent the arm from falling the following morning.
This problem was rectified by the section men after picking up the lineup, and before they would leave for whatever work was scheduled that day. They got out a ladder that had been built for the specific purpose of maintaining the signal, from the freight shed, and usi
Bruce, you’re talking about train order signals not block signals.
Henry, that is a distinction that may be lost on many of our readers. I’m posting a link to an excellent article on signals from the ABC’s of Railroading on this site.
http://www.trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=a&id=191
I found out a couple of interesting things. Firstly, semaphore signals were developed in the 1860’s which didn’t surprise me and secondly the electric block signal circuit was developed in 1872 using batteries, which surprised me a great deal.
The kind of semaphore I was describing is called an upper quadrant semaphore and wasn’t mandated for new installations until 1908. That would explain why both the Hatton, SK and Irricana, AB stations I lived in had them.
On CPR branchlines in Western Canada, Train Order Signals would have been the apex of signaling technology, as those lines were never fitted with ABS. This lasted right up until the stations were closed in the late '60’s.
If a person takes a few minutes, you can learn something new everyday.[tup]
Bruce
Don, Bruce,
Great information, great topic, thanks! My source for the lower quadrant information was “The Search for Safety” a book produced in the 60’s or 70’s by US&S. I’ll see if I can find the exact quote in the book on Monday.
Thanks again for your responses.
Steve Crise