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Frederick Manfred Simon ~ Railway Industry Photographer & Multidiscipline Creative
We had actionable intel that a northbound was imminent: we just didn’t know exactly when it would arrive at Joso on UP’s “Washy” aka “Ayer Sub.” Even with scanner and nearby repeater, interception of radio traffic was limited to Screwtape Letters comms: Dispatcher 41’s one-way queries and responses to train crews and track inspectors. I’d always wanted to capture from up on high a Canada-bound train from the north side of the stilted bridge. With less than an hour to spare I trekked up onto one ridge after another – scoping for an ideal location. Having set up, composed, broken down several times, all-in-all hiking about two miles, I settled on a promontory that afforded what I thought was the optimal vantage point. Leaning into and getting pushed around by 40-plus-mile-an-hour winds, I eked out an enclave to shield myself and gear from the violence of the gale force. Eventually this empty unit potash train came into view slowing its approach to the restricted 30 mph to tightrope the Snake River over Joso Bridge; then snake into and through the hairs of my finder. With my heavy f/2.8 tele-mirrorless combo mounted on my trusty Manfrotto all braced against one of the nearby basalt columns so pervasive on the 81,000 square-mile Columbia Plateau I managed to squeeze off this Kodachromesque-saturated image reminiscent of more than thirty years ago when a select few of us had the privilege of capturing the last days of BN trains easing over the four famous former SP&S bridges further down along the Snake spanning high over Box, Wilson, Bouvey, and Burr Canyons. (©12Apr18)