Trackside with Trains Vol. 270: "Railroad pioneers" - Voting is open

Good morning,

This week’s Trackside with Trains photo contest is now open for voting:

http://trn.trains.com/photos-videos/trackside/2015/11/pioneers

Good luck!

DH

D-Halv:

What a forum “trackside” theme, “railroad pioneers”!

The deadline for submissions keeps being extended. That tells me nobody is alive today that could have photographed big pioneering efforts in the railroad industry’s past. The SD70ACe-T4 certainly is a dazzling contemporary pioneering effort, but photographing one of those units locally will happen long past this contest.

The pool of submitters is extremely limited, from among the 278 post viewers to date, which post view number undoubtedly includes repeat viewers. A cash reward of $10,000 surely will inspire imaginative people to dream up something that could be interpreted as related to the theme, but I’m betting such a tempting reward won’t happen.

Unless you’ve received scores of submissions you are not telling us about, you might just scrap the theme. It is a great idea, but the context herein and the economic reality of it has predictable results, nothing or near nothing, and the sooner we all move on we may be the better for it.

Best,

K.P.

Same handful of people submit and the same handful of people bother to vote. Why they keep this thing going is beyond me.

Maybe turkeys along the rails, with submitters being able to define “turkeys”…?

On a similar note, how 'bout opening up the suggstions for themes? I don’t know much about turkeys, but how ‘bout "Railroad without the train’? There’s a lot of cool railroad stuff out there that would look good even without a 3/4 wedge shot of a locomotive, or a long distance, snaking through the hills train shot.

Railroad Pioneers? I imagine will see some pictures of “covered wagons” if you get my drift.

Jeff

Oh, Jeff![(-D][(-D]

jeffhergert (11-16):

Covered wagons … Cool idea! The California State Railroad Museum at Sacramento up in northern California comes to mind. They have a wagon or two. An alligator too, I think. Even a beautiful and huge cab forward steamer! Now, THAT was a pioneer if I ever heard of one …

Best,

K.P.

Too bad Ten Benson’s old-style film format photos of the WP F-units, Blair Kooistra’s of the MILW units in Tacoma, or anybody’s photos of CGW, SP, or NP, etc. units wouldn’t be eligible.

  • Paul North.

Weak selection, maybe weak topic. I voted for Brian Schmidt’s pic if only because it showed three cronological generations of locomtion as well as three different methods of generating power: steam in the middle (first), electric in the background (but modern MU), and diesel electric (foreground). The only other picture which tickeled my fancy was possibly the Mt. Washington Cog but that was more a one of a kind locomotive rather than of a given age.

My vote went to Brian Schmidt’s photo which as HENRY6 stated, shows three modes of energy but also because to see a museum restore a 70+ year old streamliner and have it pass all inspections of the FRA, BNSF & AMTRAK and operate at track speed as it did still impresses me. And they even operated a diner serving hot food cooked on the train. As Budd intended. (To paraphrase a common railfan slogan). Great shot Brian.