FL9

I and other Texans had succcessfully competed in CTC Board Magazine’s “Day in North America” (DINA) in years gone by, but this time around the rules were different for the 2005 competition.  Set for Wednesday December 28th, instead of submitting twenty or so of our best shots with captions, this time we were to submit only three shots and an accompanying “essay” long caption.

Being a week day this time instead of a Saturday, I could only get the afternoon off, so I decided to go with a sure thing and photograph the Grapevine passenger train at the stockyards and on the run to Eighth Avenue.  When the results were published in the February 2006 issue, the requested format had been scrapped, but it did not matter to me anyway as I found I did not make the cut this time around.  It did make the grade for my website, and so now I’ll let you be the judge as to if it is worth reading:

“The weather was unseasonably warm in the mid 60’s on December 28th as a diminished crowd milled around the historic Fort Worth Stockyards, still evincing some holiday spirit halfway between Christmas and New Year’s.  During the spring, summer and fall months the Stockyards is packed with visitors, but now in winter, warm and void of snow though it may be, things are moving at a slower pace.  Children on Christmas vacation look into shop windows with their parents in tow when a little after 2:00pm the sun shining in the doorway of the giant shed’s south end is suddenly blotted out by a great silhouetted shape with one bright eye.  Everyone pauses in their various affairs and steps up to the white line to watch the train’s arrival, even though an ex-ATSF GP7 now wearing the purple and gold scheme of the Grapevine Vintage Railroad is pulling the train today instead of the more thrilling and dramatic 109 year old 4-6-0 #2248.

Photographing in the shed has always been challenging as it is easy to base your calculations solely on the train below while forgetting about the open space above which results in the roof area being greatly overexposed.  Switching to digital has made this easier by shooting a test shot with my Canon 20D in manual mode before the train arrives, and making corrections based on the resulting histogram.  I weighted my exposure for the area slightly above the train and then used my camera’s pop-up flash as a filler so as to not lose the details below as a result.  I framed my shot to include not only the train, but the interested bystanders to its arrival and the Christmas decorations.

While many tourist railroads shut down this time of year due to decreased business, and indeed the Grapevine operation will pause for a month or more starting January 1st, the decision was made this year to go ahead and operate between Christmas and New Year’s with steam on the weekend and diesel power during the week.  Today’s train has brought 131 sightseers and potential shoppers to the Stockyards from Grapevine 20 miles to the east over the tracks of the Fort Worth & Western.  Rather than sitting idle for the 2 hour layover before returning with its Grapevine passengers, now the train offers the Stockyards crowd a round trip to south Fort Worth so they too can savor a holiday train ride.  After all, as the afternoon sun shines down through the shed’s clerestory roof to highlight the train’s original Tarantula lettering, the lines are short at the mock passenger car ticket booth on the right.  This involved spot metering on the sun lit portion of the passenger car so it would not be over exposed in the final result.

While for example the scenery in no way measures up to the mountains of Colorado, 112 passengers have paid for this trip and are leisurely spread out amongst the entire fleet of six cars as they proceed to the Eighth Avenue Yard where the GP7 runs around the train before returning to the Stockyards.  They will be rewarded with some good views of the Fort Worth skyline, and two crossings of the Trinity River including the Clear Fork pictured here in Forest Park west of downtown.  The sun is only minutes away from disappearing behind the clouds for good during the short remainder of the afternoon before dark.  Once again a test shot followed by a quick histogram review allows the exposure to be optimized to take maximum advantage of the low angle winter light.

I followed the train back to the Stockyards and made a few more exposures from angles based on the lack of sunlight before it departed towards Grapevine, but found none to be as representative of my theme of operations during the slow season as the three presented here.  During the coming summer months the leisurely pace will vanish as ridership swells to the now steam powered train’s capacity of around 450, and the crowds at the Stockyards make the arriving train appear to be parting a sea of humanity as it enters the building.”

And that was my entry.  I took this fourth shot of the train crossing the west fork of the Trinity River on the way back from Eighth Avenue from the Oakwood Cemetary, but it did not make my personal cut as one of the three pictures since by now I had lost the light.

Will I try again next year? Probably yes, as it was a fun challenge even if CTC Board no longer pays for submissions.