POTD - Snow Train

It may be just a few hours later and we find ourselves in nearly the exact same location as Tuesday's Photo of the Day. The snow is certainly deeper and this BNSF freight has slowed to a crawl. Even deeper snow has halted operations east of the Moffat Tunnel and the train will tie down at West Portal. The evening California Zephyr isn't due for several hours and track owner Union Pacific will need every one of them to clear out the mess ahead of it. The heavy snow makes such heroics seem unlikely.

Photo of the Day: Steve Brown
Click the photo to view a larger, unmarked version

It could be hours later, yet, except the train itself, everything about the location has changed because of daylight. No passengers wait on the platform this early in the day. The light is frustratingly even, obscuring even the important details, like where it is safe to step! So notes our photographer Steve Brown. Everywhere the light is even except inside the platform, which was the main source of light the night before. Yet the snow continues to fall in confetti-like flakes, freshly punctuating the photo with a festive mood. Let's cancel school and go watch some trains today!⚒

POTD - Winter Travel

The ritual of boarding a train from small town America is almost as old as the nation itself. In Fraser, Colorado, passengers wait in the shelter along the platform on a snowy evening in March 2003 to board the nightly Amtrak number 6, commonly known as the eastbound California Zephyr. Their next stop will be hours deeper into the night and 3,386 feet lower when they pull into Denver's Union Station before the thousand mile journey across the plains to Chicago.

Photo of the Day: Steve Brown
(click the photo to view a larger, unmarked original)

For all the difficulties it can cause photographers, nighttime still has a way of focusing the energy and taking away the distractions available in the daylight. Steve Brown makes excellent use of the ambient light to focus attention on the conductor at the head of the line of anxious passengers. A flash, a requisite for night photography in years past, would catch the thousands of flakes concealed in the darkness and throw the light back, ruining the moment. Instead, Mr. Brown lets the light on the wood interior of the platform carry a flavor of warmth to contrast with the icy cold of the drifted snow hampering even the basic task of boarding a train.⚒