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| Little River Railroad; Hillsdale, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
Just over five years ago I attended the most rainy photo charter I had ever been on. Historic Transport Preservation was in Michigan for two days of charters with Nickel Plate Road No. 765 out of Owosso, but as a bonus trip HTP added a day on the Little River Railroad using 4-6-2 No. 110 -- the smallest standard gauge Pacific ever constructed for use in the United States.
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| Little River Railroad; Coldwater, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
The day started off wet and dark. A couple of runbys were done in Hillsdale with a Baltimore & Ohio boxcar behind No. 110. Unfortunately, the boxcar was limited to yard service, and the photo train headed out of town with a flatcar and caboose trailing. The photographers for this trip went to predetermined photo locations by car.
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| Little River Railroad; Jonesville, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
John Craft was the coordinator for Historic Transport Preservation, and one of the photo locations was at the station in Jonesville. John's wife, Danah, waved to the train while staying out of the rain under the station eaves.
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| Little River Railroad; Jonesville, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
After a set of runbys at Hillsdale (top photo of this post), a nice open field at Bankers provided some nice angles. The rain was still coming down.
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| Little River Railroad; Bankers, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
At the mill in Reading it was decided to get some "human interest" into the shot. A very wet brakeman was sent into the downpour with a lantern to pose for shots. Look carefully at the caboose and you can see the amount of rain coming down.
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| Little River Railroad; Bankers, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
Continuing out of town, the weather wasn't much better for the next set of runbys...
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| Little River Railroad; Bankers, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
At Montgomery a shot was done looking down a dirt road. Well, a mud road. The chasing automobiles were starting to accumulate a lot of tracked-in mud and wet interiors from soggy photographers getting back in after each photo location.
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| Little River Railroad; Montgomery, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
An open area allowed for a midday silhouette shot -- something that is normally done at sunrise or sunset. But it was dark...
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| Little River Railroad; Montgomery, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
From Montgomery the train returned to Hillsdale for one more set of runbys before calling it a (wet) day.
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| Little River Railroad; Hillsdale, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
The next morning at the first runby with No. 765, as the sun was rising my very soaked lens suddenly fogged up. Friend Bill Raia also had his lens fog up at the exact same moment -- come to find out, we were both using Nikon 18-200 zoom lenses, and for some reason that certain dew point triggered a huge amount of fogging. I went back to the car and held my lens up to the air conditioner, trying to force dry air into it. It was quite an exclamation point to the previous day. We'll finish with one more rainy shot at Hillsdale. More photos from this charter
can be found here.
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| Little River Railroad; Hillsdale, Mich.; October 9, 2009 |
