This round of Trackside features images from four photographers, including oneTrains magazine reader. This round’s theme: Diverging routes.
Ken Fitzgerald’s photo is a classic type of railway photo. In the early 1960’s the CPR staff magazine “Spanner” had a similar shot on its’ cover. It was so nice my mother put it away for safekeeping, and she still has as far as I know. Imagine my surprise when several years ago that photo became a topic of discussion on one of the Canadian railway forums. Some great ideas never fade away.
Bruce
P.S. Andy’s photo got my vote.
Disapointing this week…diverging tracks but not diverging routes. I didn’t want to see Kedde Wye or other hackneyed sights like Rockville Bridge or Woodhaven. But they would have been more to the theme. NJT’s West End with trains on virtually all of the tracks would have done nice, or two trains side by side out of Ridgwood, NJ eastbound with one going down the Main the other over the Berge Cut Off. How 'bout diverging and merging routes of virtually any rapid transit line? There is so much out there that should have been represented but wasn’t. Ken Fitzgerald got a reluctant vote, however.
All four were great, made it hard to choose.
3 were of the same concept, just executed differently.
The reader’s submission was out of the box so to speak, but applied just the same, the towerman or dispatcher is creating a diverging route with the control board, and it is an interesting photo.
If the switch had been line for the diverging route in Ken’s photo, that would have been the hands down pick for me, but…Andy’s photo is what most of us see as a diverging route, but…I kept coming back to Tom’s photo, which is, from a ground pounders point of view, what we see every day, so in the end I went with what simply appealed to me.
I settled for Ken Fitzgerald’s dramatic sundown shot. Meets all qualifactions of the contest…and is a kind of photo I do like. Happen to have a similar one here in the office of the setting sun shining on the straight ahead tangent track. Even has a train way in the distance west bound…away from me.
Ken’s shot was a nice iteration of this kind of photograph.
Fall color at peak, steaming taconite pellets? Oh yeah, and the diverging route too…great shot Andy.
I voted for the reader submission, it’s distinctly different and shows how a diverging route is set up.
I also voted for the reader’s submission, it displays an image that has all but disappeared here in the US, with dispatching moves being done by keyboards and the older display boards disappearing and, from the submitter’s comments, something that must be disappearing in Europe, also. I really like the sunset picture but would have liked it better had the switch been lined for the diverging route, something the photographer had no control over.
Not to take away from the actual contest entries, but since there have only been 7 votes at the time of this posting, I thought I’d add my own submission.
Jim, I like yours! Incredible how dated it is already. Been there, though!
For the competition, I voted for Andy…and definitely sympathize with the problem of keeping the railroads straight around there.
Thanks, Carl. And talking about dated, somewhere I have a similar photo from when the depot was a classy stone and concrete structure, and the tracks were occupied by green & yellow F7s and E8s with matching coaches.