Out & About – Sept. 10, 2012

Beautiful weather in Houston today, but an all-day video job downtown prevented me from capitalizing on it until late afternoon when I was able to take a few pictures on my way home.

TFM SD70MAC 1660 was the sole power on this eastbound KCS intermodal that I caught at 6:15 PM at the Willowbend grade crossing, MP 374.83 on the Terminal subdivision.

KCS 2955, the KCS local was following TFM 1660. I considered waiting for it here, but chores at home, not to mention dinner, motivated me to hit the road. I did see it about 10 minutes later as it, and I, passed through Stafford, but there just wasn’t a shot to be had there.

Dinner, and the resulting clean-up, was quick. A quick check of amtrak.com at 7:15 PM informed me that the westbound Sunset Limited had departed Houston on-time at 6:55 PM. If I hurried, I just might be able to get a shot of it.

The traffic did cooperate, allowing me to get to the intermediate signal at MP 22.4 an entire minute before #1 arrived,  precisely at today’s official sunset, 7:30 P.M.

I was somewhat hesitant about setting the camera’s ISO at 2000, worried that the image would be noisy. But I’d rather deal with noise than speed blur from using too slow of a shutter speed. As it turned out, my worries were unfounded, as the image was noise-free.