Re: Friends Charter Flyer

K-37493 Wrote:
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> Odd question, how do they keep people from
> photographing the train from the highways and
> county roads that are close to the line?

The generic answer is that you can't. If the train is viewable from public property, it can be photographed by anyone. In recent years, most of the high-end charters have been run out of Antonito, vs. Chama, which limits the chase crowd to those with 4WD vehicles and knowledge of the back roads along the route. Running a charter on the 4% out of Chama is pretty much guaranteed to cause bedlam on Highway 17 and most operators have been avoiding it lately.

As someone who has ridden a lot of charters in the last 10 years, my attitude is that I really don't care what the chasers get, as long as they stay out of the way. We certainly have had situations in which careless chasers have parked their vehicles in the scene we were intending to shoot, but thankfully, it doesn't happen often. Folks who elect to chase private charters should bear in mind that without the funding from the folks on the train, they'd have nothing to photograph. The railroads don't run freights without substantial funding.....5-figure funding for even a basic train. The one favor that the patrons would ask is that chasers religiously avoid the run-by locations, because those are the spots where their presence can become a problem.

/Kevin Madore



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2018 06:39AM by KevinM.