A few trial views with a "new" camera....

[doctorwayne]

A while back, I was taking train photos on my layout, using my el cheapo Kodak as usual. The camera was on a tripod and hooked-up to an AC adapter - the latter feature very useful when it may take a half hour or more to set up a scene for photography. Turning to grab another freight car to add to the train, I caught the adapter's cord, knocking the tripod off balance and sending the camera to the concrete floor. The mechanism which holds the lense in alignment was broken, and while the camera still works, the lense is no longer on a fixed axis. It can be manually aligned, but is a hit-or-miss proposition. That, coupled with erratic focusing capabilities, lead me to a search for another camera. Yesterday, I picked up its replacement - another Kodak (used) of a different model, but also running on two AA batteries, capable of accepting the AC adapter, and able to use the one gig memory card from my old camera. While looking it over before purchasing, I was trying to find the white balance feature and found, in addition, some manual options of which the owner was unaware, and which were not available on my older camera.
Though I've yet to master this new toy, I took a few random shots (before downloading and printing the user's manual, of course). , which I'll offer here for your consideration.

While none qualify as "good photography", some aren't too bad (the rolling stock views, particularly of the black cars, seem to show the details a little better than the previous camera did), although some others aren't too good at all.
However, these latter ones struck me with their way of showing the layout as segments of landscape more-or-less isolated from their "train room" environment. If you ignore the all-too-obvious elements like the layout support framing for the second level, ceiling and light fixtures, and other incongruous articles in the background, the views seem almost what you'd see if you were trapped in a small-town environment somewhere, with the only means of possible escape being that ribbon of track disappearing in the distance.

A couple of loco shots - the depth-of-field could be better, but the details on the loco show up well:


This one's a little out-of-focus, but the lighting seems pretty reasonable over most of the image:


A Proto2000 gondola:


A Walthers USRA gondola:


Bowser Pennsy H21A


Stewart U-channel hopper:


Accurail USRA hopper:


A view looking east near the Lowbanks station. Surely those tracks must lead somewhere...


Heading east, this is what you might see looking back from the caboose as it heads out onto the Maitland River bridge...


If you'd been sitting in your car at Indian Line while this train passed, you might have caught this last glimpse as it trundled across the multiple spans over Chippawa Creek, about to disappear in the distance...


Perhaps you were near the Elfrida station when that train rolled into town, wishing you had a ticket to take you wherever she was going...


Maybe you were working nearby, pausing for a moment as she whistled prior to departure...


Or maybe you'd already been where she was headed, and were coming home again...


Wayne