Different

Intermodal from Macon to Port of Savannah in GA. (Photo by Ruth Brown.)

—The February 2019 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a Norfolk Southern stacker on snow-dusted railroad in GA.
The railroad is between Macon and Savannah. The train is headed for the Port of Savannah.
The picture is not extraordinary, but different. How do I repeat it?
I can’t. It’s from on-track railroad equipment.
Most train-photos are from about five feet above the ground: eye-level. They’re also trackside.
So the classic three-quarter view of an oncoming train is nearly always trackside at the height of the standing photographer. If the photographer sits, or takes the camera down to ground-level, the locomotive looms even higher than if the camera were about five feet.
But photographer Brown was on a rail-grinder on the rightmost track. This takes her camera up to cab level. Five feet is the locomotive frame.
Sometimes photos are taken from the track next to the track the train is on. I can’t do that. It’s too unsafe. NO WAY do I get up on the track. You don’t get much warning with an oncoming train. Suddenly getting off the track invites falling or entangling the rail.
But photographer Brown, on a rail-grinder, has her camera -a) on the track next to the train, and -b) at a height not normally photographed.

• I know it’s March. I wanted to blog this last month, but didn’t get to it.