Re: Thinking Outside the Box (car) my 2 cents

Greg,

In today's world we get 10 hours on the line, with the crew getting 1 hour terminal time at each end of the 12 hour day. If you are crossing the whole line and taking a lunch stop, you might be down to only 2 hours available for runbys. Dawn to dusk trips require two crews.

The trips that give you the most runbys are shorter trips, Antonito to Osier and back, etc. The late Stuart Lovell had a motto, "Minimum Mileage, Maximum Photos" that he adhered to when planning his trips. On one G&Q charter we got more good photos on the first day than we had in a week with another tour operator who viewed the railroad as a device to get from point A to point B in one day, without regard for where the light will be best. Stuart took four days to get from point A to point B!

When planning trips, digital cameras are your friend. You can go back and look at time stamps and figure out how long runbys took and how long it took to get from point A to point B. Programs like Photographers Ephemeris let you calculate when the light will be best at particular locations and even when you must be at a particular point before the shadows fall across the rails. Planning trips isn't easy, but it's a lot easier today than back when John Craft did his pioneering one week mega tour. That one is still the gold standard for C&TS events.

Michael Allen