Fall foliage

When one thinks of glorious fall colors, the northeast US comes to mind. The bright reds, yellows, and oranges of the hardwood forests, the blue skies with puffy clouds, that is the picture of fall.

Where I lived in upstate New York, that was a hard combination to come by. My experience was that only about every third year had a brilliant display of colors. Many factors contributed to putting on a good show. The summer had to be hot, but not too hot. There had to be enough, but not too much moisture. Temperatures had to turn cold enough, but not too cold for too long for colors to form. Finally, it had to not rain (or snow!) in September and early October. When we did see color, the peak usually only lasted about a week.

Trying to take train pictures of the fall foliage added another complication. Besides being at the whim of Mother Nature to provide the colors, I also had to be able to get off work on days when the sun was out. And, the railroad had to run trains! Taking all the above into account, it was tough to get good pictures.

One of the best is this shot near Cameron, New York,  in the Canisteo River Gorge. This was a scenic river valley that contained Conrail's Southern Tier Line. At one time it was the busy mainline of the Erie Railroad between New York City and Buffalo. By the time I took this shot it was a secondary route, only seeing about six trains a day. The one good thing for me as a railfan was that those ran on pretty regular schedules, so I could count on seeing at least a couple in daylight every day, at a known time. And, since I knew about when the trains would come by, I could pick a location and setup for my shot in plenty of time.

An unfortunate accident happened just after I got this shot. My camera, which was mounted on a tripod so I could safely stand away from the tracks, was blown over by the train. It landed lens first in the gravel. Luckily I had a protective filter on the front of the lens, which took the blow. The $10 filter was shattered, but my expensive lens was unharmed. A good reason to use a filter!