I saw the real Marias Pass last week. Thank you to the HP-Trainz guys.

[JCitron]

I was out storm chasing last week in the Dakotas and Montana. We traveled along parts of the Great Northern Railway "High Line" including a side trip in to Glacier National Park through Browning. I can say that Lothar and his Trainz partners did an awesome job accurately recreating the landscape and track layouts of the various locations in their Marias Pass X route. We then traveled from Shelby to Glacier National Park along US Route 2 which parallels the ROW most of the way. Later on we traveled east to Glasgow where we stayed the night. There's a small yard there and some of the crew memebers stayed at the same hotel.

In my travels I saw 3 westbound Empire Builders and one eastbound along with some freight. The train consists are accurately reproduced in the Marias Pass X version as well. The BNSF runs grain, coal, and container unit trains as well as some mixed freight. The frequency isn't quite as substantial as it is in the simulator, but just as interesting.

Sadly I didn't get many pictures of the trains because we were traveling quickly along the road and focusing the camera proved to be too difficult. There's nothing like bouncing along and trying to focus a camera. Barf!

Anyway, kudos again to Lothar e.t. a.l. for their great work.

John

 

[Euphod]

Nice post John, and I am jealous! How did the storm chasing go? Did you catch anything?

 

[JCitron]

Saw nothing really giant, Ed. Only a few of high-based supercells and one bigger HP storm. The best storm was 150 miles west of Minot, ND near Lignight. It almost T'd but then died because the moisture and warm front retreated. It was extremely hot and dry out there in the west, scare hot to be exact. Miles City, MT was 111F with 55% humidity. I don't care what they say. Dry heat or not is still hot!

The rail lines were awesome to see, though. Some day I may just take a road trip to take pictures of everything I want, while spending the time enjoying the scenery. This in some ways would be more enjoyable than being on a mission to get from one place to another.


I'll have to post picts when I get a chance. I've been so busy with work since I've gotten back that it's go me going insane!

Thanks,

John

 

[heyrey]

You should of seen the monster storm that sweeped through the front range of Colorado today! It was one heck of a monster! Too bad i didnt have my camera!

 

[Euphod]

I'd actually heard that the dominant high pressure that has been keeping so much of the US hot and dry has dramatically reduced the number of severe storms this year.

 

[JCitron]

I'd actually heard that the dominant high pressure that has been keeping so much of the US hot and dry has dramatically reduced the number of severe storms this year.

This is exactly what is causing this major draught and lack of any real storms. The problem is with the dry air like this, when there are storms, they are giant hailers instead when there is any activity. During the spring, Texas and other Midwestern states were plagued with 4-5 feet of hail, with some storms producing upto grapefruit-sized hailstones in other places.

From what I was told, a lot of this is due to La Niña transitioning over to the El Niño weather patterns. These are named after the upwelling that occurrs of the coast of Chile around Christmas. When these happen, they alter the weather patterns worldwide, sometimes for the good, and sometimes for the bad.

@heyrey - I heard about this storm. This was a line of big supercells that came in off the high lands through the Palmer Divide.

When things like this happe, like the other night on my way home from work, I never have a camera to catch them!

John

 

[cascaderailroad]

With todays cheepo $89 digital cameras, that have auto focus, and anti shake ... snaping photos is not even requiring looking through the viewfinder at all ie:
http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc339/cascaderailroad/227.jpg

I know someone that went to the Grand Canyon and took photos with one of them new fangled Carol Wrights-Binocular Camera's ... none of em' turned out ... no photos at all ! :mop::'mop:

I told him to get right back on the bus, and do it all over again !

 

[JCitron]

With todays cheepo $89 digital cameras, that have auto focus, and anti shake ... snaping photos is not even requiring looking through the viewfinder at all ie:

I have a somewhat more expensive Sony and thought it would work, but that wasn't the case! Click, miss what I wanted, or blurr. The camera has a nice fast shutter too, but the anti-shake couldn't keep up with the constant vibration from the road.

The other problem is even though the landscape is flat, there are little hills and cuts that the tracks disappear into usually when there's a train coming. I did get some shots of a coal train coming out of Gillespie, WY and a long container train heading east from Shelby. My shots of Shelby yard are a bit bright because we were heading west directly into the sun.

When I get a chance, I'll post my picts.

John

 

[slabay]

With todays cheepo $89 digital cameras, that have auto focus, and anti shake ... snaping photos is not even requiring looking through the viewfinder at all ie:
http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc339/cascaderailroad/227.jpg

I know someone that went to the Grand Canyon and took photos with one of them new fangled Carol Wrights-Binocular Camera's ... none of em' turned out ... no photos at all ! :mop::'mop:

I told him to get right back on the bus, and do it all over again !

That's a GREAT shot from an El Cheepo!! And they're a hell of a lot easier to put in your pocket than my Nikon D3100 is. :hehe:

Of course, there's nothing quite like a long lens to rech out and grab the distant pics or make the detailed shots though.