PHOTOGRAPHY: GREG MONROE
sites are devoted to images of railcar graffiti (some of these “taggers” are pretty good artists). But there are railfan internet sites and blogs devoted to getting rid of graffiti (on a recent blog a railfan wrote graffiti books “would make good toilet paper.”) Yet, maybe there is some good reason to photograph railcar graffiti, just as we try to photograph all other aspects of railroading. It might be as part of a historical record of a railroad. In the future you might be glad you have these photos for use in a book or maga- zine article on that railroad, or to show one of the varied aspects of freight cars for im- age shows. If a modeler, photos can help you duplicate graffiti on your layout, although there are commercial graffiti decals avail- able.
Trespassing is also a bad aspect of railfan photography. First, I freely admit that in the distant past I would walk down the tracks (trespass) to a remote location to get a good train photo. I was simply doing what I saw other railfans doing, and it was common
here in Colorado to also see hikers and fish- ermen hiking the tracks into a remote canyon for recreation or to a remote fishing spot. On one winter hike in 1981 into the An- imas River Canyon on the Durango & Silver- ton, I saw hoof prints of horses in the snow between the rails. Railroad personnel I en- countered usually gave me a friendly wave as their train passed. I even once had a brakeman start to get out of the way of my camera as he detrained to do a roll-by (I in- dicated I actually liked having him in the photo). But things have changed over the years.
Even long before 9/11’s tightened security I had stopped hiking railroad tracks, but it is hard to avoid trespassing in some manner to get a train photo, sometimes. Most railroads own all property out some distance along each side of the tracks, including at grade crossings. A week after 9/11 I was railfan- ning the Union Pacific’s Sherman Hill line through southern Wyoming. Although I was parked beside the public road well away from the tracks waiting for a train, a track patrolman made me move “to be off railroad right of way, (indicating) all this area (of about 20 yards) between that fence and the tracks.” About the same time period I had a Burling-
Qualifying as “ugly” is Southern San Luis Valley Railroad D-500, home-built in 1955 on steam locomotive tender trucks and powered by a chain drive from an International Harvester diesel engine (above). It was at Blanca, Colo., in the mid-1980s. Finding oddball locomotives and other unusual rail equipment like this is certainly one of the good aspects of railfan photography. Humorous railroading moments make for good railfan photos. Southern Pacific crewmen evidently decided it was easier and quicker to hand push this car out of a spur in Steamboat Springs, Colo., than maneuver their waiting locomotive into position (left).
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