An Idea Fueled With Passion Comes to Fruition in Stunning Fashion

Ah, rail-related daydreams, if you will, are part of the railfanning process I suspect. For me it was winning the lottery and buying the Loop Ranch, at the heart of the famed Tehachapi Loop near Keene, California, and opening a bed-and-breakfast for railfans from all over the world to enjoy. To date, that dream has not been realized. Perhaps it might, someday, if I play the lottery. (NOTE TO SELF: Buy a lottery ticket.)

How many times have we all passed a house, predominately in a rural community, and seen some railcar or two on the property perhaps serving as tool shed or a clubhouse? How about a caboose spending it’s final days as someone’s story waiting to be told? I think most railfans have dreamt, at one time or another, about acquiring a cool piece of rolling stock and doing something special with it. 

Photo used by permission. Copyright Tom Lambrecht/Bill ChristopherBack in February of 2010, I made a blog post about just such an effort. However, rather than a boxcar, a reefer, or even a caboose, a couple acquired a locomotive, restored it and then successfully converted it into a beautiful and amazing lodge! (You don’t see too many of those across the country!)

The couple, Jamie and Tom Lambrecht, have a shared passion for locomotives, which helps tremendously, I imagine, when you come home and tell your spouse, “I want to make a lodge out of a locomotive.”

The amazing story of the GN 441’s rebirth with fascinating details and photos every step of the wayWhen I recently revisited the GN441.com website, I was excited to see that there were several posts detailing the story of how the GN 441 came to be.

As I began to read the posts I became immersed in the challenges and struggles of realizing one’s rail restoration dream. The posts are extremely detailed and provide plenty of useful and interesting information.

Along with the superb written account there are many great photographs taken during each step of the way that afford the reader an inside look at locomotive construction in general and the various elements of the restoration process. I particularly enjoyed the section that show the shipment of the GN 441 from RELCO Locomotives, Inc. in Albia, Iowa, where the GN 441 was renovated, to Essex, Montana. There are some great photos showing the GN 441, in consist, at many cool locations along the way. I bet that was some trip in and of itself! (Talk about Chasing Steel!)

The story doesn’t end when the locomotive is restored and placed in it’s final location at the Izaak Walton Inn in Glacier National Park. Rather, that’s when Jamie steps-in and takes over the project to create an amazing interior that even the Great Northern would be proud of.

I encourage everyone to check out their story and once you read the posts, I think, that you too will appreciate all of the attention-to-detail and historical accuracy, where possible, that the Lambrechts paid to the entire undertaking.

I take my hat off to the Lambrechts and proclaim a “Job well done!” I am grateful that they had the vision, the fortitude to see it realized, and the resources to make it happen. Thanks to Jamie and Tom, there is a fine “warrior of the rails” for all to enjoy in a majestic place with a killer view of the tracks for a long time to come.

Inspired by a Book to Try Something New

I found myself needing to drive to work in downtown Los Angeles on a Friday a couple of weeks ago. I mistakenly thought that, since it was Friday, the traffic would be “Friday-Lite,” which is how the traffic reporters tend to describe it. It wasn’t.

I knew that going home would be bad, as is typically the case as commuters and people heading out of town for the weekend cram onto the too few freeways leaving Los Angeles. It turns out it wasn’t just bad, it was miserable. In the time it would normally take for my to complete my commute by Metrolink train service, I wasn’t even halfway home. I started to think about options to sitting in the “going nowhere” traffic jam I found myself in.

As any respectable tech-head would do, I worked my way to a Frys Electronics superstore, a mecca of sorts for us geeks, to spend a few idle hours while the traffic died down. I methodically walked up and down the aisle looking for the cool stuff that I just had to have. Considering the time I spent in there, I walked out with very little damage being done to my wallet. I spent only $100.

Creative Night : Digital Photography Tips & Techniques by Harold Davis

One item I purchased was a book on night photography. The book is titled “Creative Night: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques.” (It is authored by Harold Davis and published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.) I have always been intrigued by the mystic, insight, and beauty garnered by night photography, couple that with the fact that I find myself in the dark quite a bit with Deb enjoying her stargazing activities, and it was a perfect book for me. To wit, see this post: Steel and Stars.

After getting home and settling in I began to read the book. (This is one of those books that I don’t even want to flip through pages - I just want to be surprised by the material and photos. Weird uh?). I found the material informative and written well. I like the author’s style and flow.

After reading the first few chapters I had already deduced that this was money well spent and I looked forward to trying my hand at capturing all that the nights have to offer. So after reading seventy some odd pages I was sufficiently inspired to get off of my ass and go out into night. I headed east.

I found myself searching for a suitable test subject on which to practice the techniques I had just read about. One location came to mind because of it’s abundance of passing trains and suitable lighting - the train station at San Bernardino, California, some twenty miles east of me.

As I set-up for the first shot, I opted, perhaps foolishly, to try to also capture the scenes in HDR. I now realize that I should have taken more individual images to capture the entire dynamic range of the exposures, but the longer shutter times required for night photography coupled with my haste, precluded me from making the right choice at the time.

Nonetheless, I offer the following shots of my first efforts to capture night scenes, in HDR also. I definately am looking forward to improving my abilties and plan an taking many more exposures like this in the immediate future:

San Bernardino Amtrak and Metrolink Station at Sunset - [9/25/2010 - San Gabriel Subdivision] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry. San Bernardino Metrolink Platforms - Night Test Shot 1 - [9/25/2010 - San Gabriel Subdivision] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry.

San Bernardino Metrolink Platforms - Night Test Shot 2 - [9/25/2010 - San Gabriel Subdivision] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry.

San Bernardino Metrolink Platforms - Night Test Shot 3 - [9/25/2010 - San Gabriel Subdivision] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry.

San Bernardino Metrolink Platforms - Night Test Shot 4 - [9/25/2010 - San Gabriel Subdivision] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry.

San Bernardino Trackage - Night Test Shot 1 - [9/25/2010 - San Gabriel Subdivision] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry.

San Bernardino Trackage - Night Test Shot 2 - [9/25/2010 - San Gabriel Subdivision] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry.

Tehachapi Pass in HDR: Caliente

A long-time favorite spot to watch and photograph trains of mine is the Tehachapi Mountains, located between Mojave and Bakersfield, California. I have made countless trips to the golden hills of Tehachapi over the decades and the area is on my list of places where I would like to live.  The area features hard-core mountain railroading, a storied past, and four seasons complete with all the changes that brings.

While I have been working on perfecting my use of HDR software, I have pulled some of my older RAW images out and reprocessed them as pseudo-HDR images. The following images are from a very special corner of the Tehachapi Pass region known as Caliente, California and were taken on a cloudy day in late May of 2006. 

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UP 4234 North 1 - UP 4234 (EMD SD70M), UP 5250 (GE ES44AC), UP 5763 (GE AC4400CTE), UP 5368 (GE ES44AC), and UP 5761 (GE AC4400CTE) in full dynamics to ease a heavy manifest train downgrade towards the horseshoe curve at Caliente, CA. Their battle with the Tehachapi Mountains will be over shortly as the grade will ease into the central valley of California.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry

UP 4234 North 2 - UP 4234 (EMD SD70M), UP 5250 (GE ES44AC), UP 5763 (GE AC4400CTE), UP 5368 (GE ES44AC), and UP 5761 (GE AC4400CTE) in full dynamics to ease a heavy manifest train downgrade towards the horseshoe curve at Caliente, CA. Their battle with the Tehachapi Mountains will be over shortly as the grade will ease into the central valley of California.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry

Horseshoe at Caliente - UP 4234 (EMD SD70M), UP 5250 (GE ES44AC), UP 5763 (GE AC4400CTE), UP 5368 (GE ES44AC), and UP 5761 (GE AC4400CTE) in full dynamics to ease a heavy manifest train downgrade and around the horseshoe curve at Caliente, CA.

From this view it is easy to understand why when the rails first reached Caliente, CA, in 1875, that the land prices soared. Folks thought the rails would end here and that there was no way to get a railroad through the Tehachapi Mountains. Well the Southern Pacific Railroad brought in a brilliant engineer whose first order of business was to lay out the horseshoe curve seen here to reposition the tracks and right-of-way to climb up the side of the mountains that surround Caliente, CA. As a result, Caliente never became a major railhead as was hoped.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry

Horseshoe at Caliente 2 - UP 4234 (EMD SD70M), UP 5250 (GE ES44AC), UP 5763 (GE AC4400CTE), UP 5368 (GE ES44AC), and UP 5761 (GE AC4400CTE) in full dynamics to ease a heavy manifest train downgrade and around the horseshoe curve at Caliente, CA.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry

BNSF Z-Train and the Golden Hills of Tehachapi - A BNSF hot intermodal train is dwarfed by the golden grass-covered Tehachapi Mountains.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry

BNSF 7740 West Descends Into Caliente - BNSF 7740 (GE ES44DC), BNSF 4674 (GE DASH 9-44CW), and BNSF 4792 (GE DASH 9-44CW) are holding back the tonnage of this westbound intermodal train as they descend the grade in the Tehachapi Pass into Caliente, CA.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry

BNSF 7740 West Descends Into Caliente 2 - BNSF 7740 (GE ES44DC), BNSF 4674 (GE DASH 9-44CW), and BNSF 4792 (GE DASH 9-44CW) are holding back the tonnage of this westbound intermodal train as they descend the grade in the Tehachapi Pass into Caliente, CA.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry

BNSF 4866 East Climbs Out - BNSF 4866 (GE DASH 9-44CW), BNSF 4828 (GE DASH 9-44CW), BNSF 4768 (GE DASH 9-44CW), and BNSF 8739 (EMD GP60) climb the mountain shelf out of Caliente, CA heading towards Bealville with an eastbound intermodal train in tow.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry

BNSF 4866 East Climbs Out 2 - BNSF 4866 (GE DASH 9-44CW), BNSF 4828 (GE DASH 9-44CW), BNSF 4768 (GE DASH 9-44CW), and BNSF 8739 (EMD GP60) climb the mountain shelf out of Caliente, CA heading towards Bealville with an eastbound intermodal train in tow.
[5/27/2006 - Mojave Subdivision] © Copyright 2006, Joe Perry