A THOUGHT ON SMALL SENSOR CAMERAS

Funky Cabins, December 2012

I took this shot today at a model train layout. I made attempts at this before, but those attempts never even got close. Mostly, they failed because I was using my full-frame DSLR. That camera has an inherent shallow depth of field, and so my photos looked like tilt-shift photos (which many actually were). I know that this photo is not all the way there, but it is very close. I am using this as a "sketch pad" drawing to help me to come up with some interesting compositions in the near future.

By the way, the small camera I used for this and other shots has a very small sensor. Therefore, the lens is a much shorter focal length, and that is why I get a greater depth of field. The camera is very small, and it is much easier to get it down into the scenery. 

TIED DOWN LIKE KING KONG

The A&MR RR 101, December 2012

This is the locomotive that I have operated from time to time over the past two years. It was stored at the flake board plant in Arcata. The plant closed about a year ago, and is being demolished for scrap. We only had a short section of track to run it on, but because of the lack of power to keep the batteries charged, it was not operated very often. This photograph shows it after it was loaded onto a flatbed trailer. It was transported yesterday to Samoa where the Timber Heritage Society is keeping it for future use.

HAVING FUN BEING SPONTANEOUS

The Last of Autumn's Leaves, December 2012

Yesterday I took Sadie for a walk in the forest behind our house. I left my new pocket camera turned  on so I could find out if the "geo-tagging" would work better. What I discovered is that it takes the camera awhile to acquire the satellites, and by leaving the camera on that it recorded fairly accurate coordinates of all my shots. This information linked with the map and I could see through the forest canopy and onto where I hike. I think that this feature is pretty cool.

One of the things I like about the small camera is that it encourages me to shoot. I have it in my pocket, and it is no hassle to get it out and to make imagery. I think of it as a sketch pad. When I got home, I still was in the mood to photograph. I came up with a series of these images of the maple leaves on the hood of the old Toyota.

TA, December, 2012

THE MORNING AFTER

Sunday Morning in Eureka After the Big Rains, December 2012

I took this about an hour ago with my new companion camera a Canon S100. It is wonderful having a pocket camera that I can carry anywhere. I took this image with the  camera set to a high image quality setting. It was hand-held, and I used ISO 400. While I was working on it in Light Room, I could see that the actual image quality is much lower than with my Canon 5dMII, and that is to be expected. Nonetheless, this little camera will provide me with a tool that will come in handy whenever and wherever I may be.

ROAD SWITCHER

Alco Road Switcher, Portola, 2012

I just love this image, and I know it will print out gorgeous. I will not tell another railroad story today. I am getting ready for Arts Alive. I have numerous photographs on the wall and in a print bin. They are all for sale and discounted at least 25%.

Well, I was wrong. I do have a story about Alcos like this one. When I was in school at Sierra Junior High in Bakersfield, I would often see a Southern Pacific train that had three of these engines on the head-end. The almost daily, train ran on the SP main line. My school was near the line. Whenever I heard the train I always stopped whatever I was doing, either in the classroom or out side, and imagined that I was in the cab and running that train.

I observed that the train consisted of, what to me appeared to be, many cement hoppers, and I deducted that the train took the cars to the Monolith Cement plant near Tehachapi. I was familiar enough with the route that I could day-dream for a long while. That is where I wished to be - not at school. I eventually manifested a version of those day dreams. I did not run Alcos up and down the hill, but I did run SP diesels past that school many times within about a dozen years of making those wishes.

To me, the railroad experience was the most idyllic when I was in the seventh and eighth grades, and now that I am in my sixties. My experiences in my twenties and early thirties did include some wonderful times, but the reality of working shifts, and often working short-rested was not the same as the dream. 

SUNSET COLORS ON THE BALD HILLS

Lone Oak on Bald Hill Road, September, 2012

I took this photograph two months ago in September. Equinox was just a couple of days prior, so the sun was setting directly to the west. It was very dry that evening.

I imagine if I were there today it would be very different. We are in the midst of a series of rain storms, and I imagine that once hard and dusty road is now softer and muddy. 

A DIFFERENT TYPE OF PLOW

A Plough of Different Stripes, Portola 2012


Whereas the rotary plow throws snow out of its way, this one used brute force to shove the snow aside. I do not know which one would do the best job, and I imagine that it all depended on how much snow was on the tracks. While I worked on the railroad, we never used a plow. All most all of our locomotives that were used on the hill had built-in plows on the head-end. Besides, the Tehachapi Range seldom experienced really heavy snowfall. I imagine there were a few occasions where I was on the head-end whereby we pushed a little snow out of the way. If we did, it was not anything memorable.

This is an image that I am considering printing. It only has two stars out of four, and I will allow this one to ferment for awhile.

ROTARY PLOUGH

Southern Pacific Rotary Plow, Portola, 2012

We did not have these for the Tehachapi line. They were often used on the Donner route where the high Sierra route received more snow and precipitation. Summit, at Tehachapi is at an elevation of about four-thousand feet whereas Donner is about three-thousand feet higher. There is a lot of history that goes with these plows, but that is not in the scope of my musings.

I had three basic careers during my tenure at the SP. I started out as a switchman, gave up my seniority, and then I went on the road as a brakeman. After a couple of years on the road, the SP opened up positions for apprentice engineers. I gave up my seniority again, and went into engine service. Career wise, those were good moves. I could see the handwriting on the wall, and it said that  there were to be significant changes in how the railroad used its employees.

The first clue came when the railroad closed Mojave Yard sometime around nineteen-seventy. The San Joaquin Division included Fresno Yard, Bakersfield Yard, and Mojave Yard. All SJ switchmen had seniority that was good in all three yards. I do not recall how many guys came over to Bakersfield from Mojave, but I estimate about a dozen men's positions were affected. When they moved to either Bakersfield or Fresno, they had the right to "bump" anyone with whom they had seniority over. I think everyone that came to Bakersfield had seniority over me, and so I had less to pick from at my home terminal.

That alone was enough to make me think about asking if I could go on the road. I inquired, and was granted permission to transfer over to the brakeman's extra board. I did not have to take any student trips since I was knowledgeable with the rules of the road. 

MORE WORKING ON THE RAILROAD AND WHEN NATURE CALLED

WP Number 805-A

There is something very real for me with these photographs that I am sharing. Even though I never knew much about the WP as a company, I know a lot about how their equipment worked. Take this locomotive for example, we had these on the SP, and I got to ride in the cab of several as I was taking unofficial "student trips" from Bakersfield to Fresno. I had already taken my student trips as a switchman, but my friend Wayne Johnson arranged for me to pretend to be a student brakeman. It was a treat to ride in a "covered wagon" and it is something I will always remember.

Those rides occurred in 1965. That was when we still flushed the on-board toilet onto the track. It is hard to believe  but even the passenger trains flushed onto the roadbed. I remember signs that were posted in the toilets of the passenger cars that cautioned one not to flush when the train was stopped at a station. Now I wonder about the overall insult to those men who worked on the section gangs. They had to know that we were shitting on there work projects. 

The view from the cab was somewhat restricted compared to the view from a road or yard switcher. The only way to see to the rear was to lean out the window unless the train was on a curve. The engine compartment was enclosed and extremely loud. The toilet was located near the rear of that compartment. 

BACK SHOPS, AND ROUNDHOUSES

Colors on the Silver Screen, the Engine Facility, Western Pacific Railroad, Portola, 2012

In the mid nineteen-seventies, I worked as a "hostler" at the Southern Pacific yard at Bakersfield. My duties as a hostler were to move locomotives within the engine facility where individual locomotives were serviced, repaired and stored. There were numerous storage areas including the roundhouse, which had somewhere around a dozen bays, about another dozen tracks for individual locomotives outside and adjacent to the roundhouse tracks, the turntable, two service tracks where the locomotives were refueled and serviced, and a ready track.

I think to be a hostler that one was required to be a "promoted" engineman (engineer), because we often took consists (more than one locomotive configured to operate as a single engine) from the ready track out into the yard and onto the train. We did so with head-end power and with helper engines of eastbound trains that had remotely operated helper engines. Switchmen directed us to an empty track. We were then to proceed down to the east end of the yard. At the east end, another switchman would take us to the designated track and couple us to the waiting train. Meanwhile, another hostler would be directed by a switch engine crew to take his consist of helper units to be "cut into" the rear portion of the same train (usually somewhere in the rear third of the train).

Once the train was set (the air hoses all coupled and the train line charged with compressed air), we would conduct the air brake test. We did these functions with the remotes in an effort by management to save time for the engine and train crews. Normally, it was the train's engineer who would take the power from the ready track to the train, but that entire process took too long especially after the twelve-hour rule went into effect.

As a hostler, I loved doing these tasks because my pay was based on the weight of the heaviest engine (an engine is a locomotive or multiple locomotives that are coupled together, and that operate as a single engine) that I operated during the shift. It was fun too, whenever we took a consist down the mainline to the east end because we could go fast at main line speeds whereas on yard tracks we were restricted to ten miles-per-hour.

MORE ON TRAINS

Two Wooden Cabooses, Portola, October 2012

I really like how this image looks as a print. I love the complementary colors, and the composition feels as right to me now as it did when I took it.

One day while I was at the museum, I sat in a bay-window caboose for awhile. Sitting there brought back memories from forty-two years ago. I used to sit in them for hours at a time back when I was a flagman (rear brakeman) on the Colton Cutoff on the Southern Pacific main line from Palmdale to West Colton.

For several months in 1971, I became a "caboose rat" (a brakeman that prefers to work the caboose over the head-end). One of my primary duties was to protect the rear of the train from being overrun by another train. I sometimes had to walk back down the tracks as far as two miles so that I could place a "torpedo" (an explosive device that was placed on the rail that emitted a loud bang when a locomotive ran over it). Often times if we knew that we were going to stop the engineer would slow down at the two mile point so that the I could get off and quickly place my torpedo. Then I would run and catch the caboose. Then if we knew for sure that we were to stop I would get off the train at a point one mile from where the caboose was to stop. I would be armed with my lantern, fusees, a red flag, and perhaps another torpedo. Otherwise  if we had an unexpected stop, I was required to walk back the full distance, and it was expected that I would do my duties to protect the train. No matter how far back I went, I always had to walk back to the caboose when I was called back by the sound of our train's locomotive's whistle signal. Needless to say, I was always in good walking/running shape. I could walk at about a mile every twenty minutes.

Senior brakemen usually preferred to work the head-end because they usually did not have to face the possibility of walking several miles during a trip. Since the job was determined by seniority  the senior brakeman usually worked the head end. Still, I liked the quiet and completely different feel to being on the rear.

ON A THANKSGIVING DAY

PECOS, 2007

I am wishing everyone a good and happy Thanksgiving.