New Jersey Transit

So we got a taxi from LaGuardia Airport to Penn Station with amazingly little traffic, then got a train to the town in New Jersey where my sister and her family live. Easy. The New Jersey Transit trains we took had a rather nagging nanny state tone. Do people actually clip their nails on the commuter trains? Do people need to be told not to jump off moving trains, particularly when the door is closed?               

Thursday Arch Series

Well, sort of. the Arch is in the picture although it's not what the picture is about.

Sometimes I get desperate for blog fodder. This isn't that big a city, most of the suburbs are a snore and there are few street events in the winter. As someone, maybe Frank Zappa, said, necessity is the mother of invention. Gotta wrack my brain for stupid photo tricks.

So I went out to shoot light trails. Simple if you know the recipe. These were taken in a trashy corner where I 55 goes up a ramp and onto a bridge over the river, heading for Chicago. On a tripod, of course, ISO 100, f 22 and a -3 stop ND filter. The top exposure was 20 seconds and the bottom one 25.

Came out pretty cool, if I do say so myself. That's a private dinner excursion train, not Amtrak, on the trestle in the top picture. I opened the shutter before the front of the train got to the Arch so the legs sort of show through.                 

Landscapes With Trains

Out here in Kansas you can photograph all the trains you want. Long haul trains, carrying coal and grain and every kind of freight. Just don't have bad timing while driving on a highway with a railroad crossing. You could wait a long time.

There is a Union Pacific line that runs along the west edge of Marysville. It has a freight siding maybe a dozen tracks wide. An overpass was built across it on US 36 a few years ago. Good thing. The trains crossing the highway could really slow down the trip from town to Mrs. C's family farm.

Home tonight but we'll run with this for a while.