Good evening -
I was trying to find a photo of a TOFC intermodal train and went to the Railpictures.net website as well as a few others. FAR AND AWAY - the phtos were locomotive shots. Primarly 3/4 views of oncoming train, very focused and often cropped / framed to capture the power and very little else. Lots of roster shots too. In looking at my own photos and some by others which were recently posted here, I see further implication of the same tendency.
I realize that a train is a large, legthy thing, but there has to be more opportunity to capture more than we do. If someone looked at the photos we capture, the dominant impression would be that RR’s operate locomotives, for locomotives-sake, with no train following. Clearly there are examples to the contrary, but look at the dominant trend and you’ll see lots of power, but not lots else. Do you want to be that guy?
A locomotive is far more interesting and dynamic than a boxcar full of carrots or a tankcar full of gasoline. Althought a tank car full of gasoline would be nice. [:p]
This is part of why I never really got into photography or videos. I’m one who wants to see the entire train, not just the head end and or helper power on the trains.
I enjoy watching “Junk” trains go by, they always have a good mix of cars, the best ones have a little bit of everything, a few old boxcars mixed in with a few new ones, perhaps some tank cars of different sizes and colors, then next comes a few gondolas filled with scrap metal, then a string of bulkhead flats full of lumber, a few more box cars, some log cars then for the grand finale a couple of trucks or a tractor on a flat car.
With the intermodal trains nowadays, there isn’t too much interesting to see, just car after yellow car of TTX COFC… the power is most definately the most interesting part of those trains.
A vast majority of the photographs I take are of freight cars. You might have guessed that from the topics I start. While we are on the topic, has anyone heard of Freight Car Journal? I bought a booklet about 10 years ago that was a joint publication between them and the WP Historical Society. I have never heard anything else about it, even when I searched the internet.
Yes I do agree with you that seeing the entire train is what makes it a train. Yes, I absolultely (spelling) love the big, strong, powerful, and beautiful locomotives working hard. However, I also like to see various amounts of cars weather it’s a unit train or manifest. I stay for it all!!! Sometimes, I’ll even get a pen and paper and write down the reporting marks and car numbers of specific cars I’ve never seen or heard of before. Then I look them up allong with looking up the car’s specs.
However, I will say that the main aspect of what grabs people’s attention to the wide world of railroading is the locomotive. This is how I got hooked (How do you think I got interested in diesel mechanics??? lol) , then I started looking at other reasons why railroads are beautiful.
It’s for this very reason that I seldom visit Railpictures.net anymore. My interest in trains has always been the operation, be it yard work, switching an industrial plant or working a refinery or coal field. Yes, the locomotive — diesel or steam (and yes, I remember steam!), is exciting and awesome. But for me it is what that loco is doing and how it’s doing it that is interesting. If I were able to get out and photograph trains, the bulk of my collection would be box cars and tankers. This may be one reason I am “stuck” in the 40’s and 50’s. The variation seemed to be more back then.
But nothing beats the action in a busy yard, regardless of size.
I enjoy the power on the front because csx uses so many varieties.but its really nice to see unpatched DT&I,SP and Chessie 60ft boxcars used in auto parts hauling.even a old pc gon will get my attention.
stay safe
joe
I agree with Dave, they won’t except anything else. I’ve tried photos of preserved Roundhouses on Modern Railroads, and photos of interesting looking cars in the train, but all come back with the rejection, and the reason being “Bad motive.” Really annoying when you like to see more than engines. About the only other thing they’ll except is a photo of a caboose. Or some MoW equipment.
This facination with locomotives is likely due to their being the HEART of the train and the “sexiest” part as well. I also like “junk” trains much better than the intermodals and stackers as htey have much more interesting cars…some with paint that belies their original heritage…and are worth my attention, but I must admit to being a “loco lover” ever since those two FL9 units passed me at 50 mph at Tuckahoe, NY back in 1974 while I was waiting for my M.U. train to GCT (oh, what a rush).
OK we all love the locomotives. They are the heart of the train and to some the most interesting part. For me the head end has become a monotonous berage of almost identical wide cabs wearing the same paint. They come in orange or yellow in my neck of the woods. But the locomotives are just part of a train. There is so much more to it than that. I find operations to be the most interesting aspect of railroading these days. What draws me to this aspect of railroading is the operations planning for my next layout. I have built several HO scale layouts in my time and each one was designed better than the last. The first few were not at all designed according to an operating plan, I was too busy trying to avoid bad track layouts. Now when I design a layout I have a goal of having a layout that has a real operations to perform when it is done. This makes operating the layout much more fun when it has realistic operations. This has made me look much more carefully at what those real operations are. Sometimes it’s easy to see. You can study activity at your local industrys and see what goes on day to day. But what about the drag freight that passes by you on the main. What is in all those boxcars and tankers and where are they coming from and going to. How are the trains blocked and sorted en route. Oh how I wish you could look at the side of a car and see what’s in it and where it is going from/to. These are the things that I find most facinating at this point. Not that that’s the only part that interests me. One of the reasons that I enjoy this hobby so much is there are so many aspects of it. And when one aspect has been persued to death there are many others just waiting to be explored. The avenues are limitless.
One other thing that facinates me is seeing the ages of the equipment, both locomotives and the cars as well. I often see cars built in the 1950’s and 1960’s and occassionally even older than that (although not very often). Another issue that sometimes facinates and frustrates me as well is the fact thta we have some really old locomotives (such as switchers and GP9’s, etc.) out there still running around while they are scrapping much younger power, much of it still with lots of potential miles left on it…this issue is one of cost effectiveness I am sure, but facinating nonetheless.
In spite of the large number of 3/4 head shots of modern power on the net, those kinds of photos are just a smudge on the surface of railroad photography. If that was all there was to the whole universe of railroads and the railfan hobby, I would have been out of here in a couple of hours.
As it is, I am not worried about finding something new for the rest of my days and I would make that statement even if I was 50 years younger.
Maybe I’m getting old, but I have to agree… And you could say the same thing about cars as well. I haven’t been up to Mojave, or done any serious watching in years really. I was near Edwards the other day, and every single BNSF train looked the same to me. Luckily there was a lot more to watch in the sky. I find myself following the shortlines from a distance, or just reading about the older stuff. Either that, or thinking about modeling stuff whatever way I would want it.
It’s a shame the sites like railpictures.net aren’t a little more open minded. I can see controlling overall quality, but it just seems a bit constrained in terms of subject. I like the power just as much as anybody… But more and more, I find the old shots that show what the environment of the day was like, to be quite interesting. The reason why I’ve always liked railroads is that they encompass so many things… I like the industries, the buildings, the architecture, the electronics. There’s a lot to learn about.
Dave
-DPD Productions - Featuring the NEW TrainTenna LP Directional RR Radio Monitoring Antenna- http://eje.railfan.net/dpdp/
I too am all for the locomotives, but I also find all of the cars interesting as well. Between the varying colors, fallen flags, graffiti (and yes I know that graffiti is wrong and evil, so please don’t burn me for it), and far away roads that make each train very different and unique. To me this is the down side of unit trains from the photography standpoint, each car is basically identical, very monotonous for taking roster shots of the cars. and unfortunately for me, being here along the Joint Line in Colorado the majority of trains are unit coals But either way for about the last two years I have been getting as many roster shots of cars and locos as I can. Right now I have just under 3,000 pictures of various cars, (boy digital is nice, there is no way I could be doing this with film!). Just my [2c]!
And just as a side note, the last most interesting car that I have found was a boxcar in Cheyenne last weekend that was MMA 117. A Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway Limited boxcar that was as shiny and clean of any car that I have seen in a long time!
On my DVD’s of trains I like watching the whole train. The ones I have are full trains going by. My wife cannot understand how I can watch 100 of the same car go by in a unit train, but I find it fascinating.
My daughter likes the rest of the train too. It is not as loud as the locomotives and doesn’t scare her with the horn!
Back in the 70’s when I became a railfan, it was all about the locomotives. Just loved the head end. Now, looking at my photos, I am disappointed in my lack of interest ( and photography) in the rest of the trains.
There were some great boxcars back then that are now gone. Who could forget those classic UP boxcars with the maps?
Today, the locomotives all look identical. I find most of the trains are either intermodals or coal trains. Manifest trains are a treat. Even tho the boxcars are pretty much all the same and there are far too many covered hoppers, those trains are interesting.
By far, my favorite train is NS 177, a pure junk train from Chicago to Ft. Wayne that usually has 100+ cars and quite a few gons with scrap.
Today, my interests are more in the line of: how many cars, how many loads, what is the revenue per car (and train), origin, destination, etc.
