An Industrial Wonderland Of Steam
Recently, my wife took a week-long trip to Colorado to surprise one of her sisters. The weekend she was gone, I decided that I would take the opportunity to take a photography trip. The only problem was deciding where to go. Several options were on the table, mainly various state parks across central Tennessee, southern Indiana, and central Kentucky. Ultimately, a post by the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, TN made up my mind.
As it turned out, TVRM’s ex-Southern Railroad star, no. 4501 would be making her maiden trip of 2018 to Summerville, GA the very weekend my wife was in Colorado. Having ridden behind 4501 twice with my wife, I knew there were plenty of opportunities to capture some good shots of 4501 along the route. I went to work doing what research I could using Google Earth to find some potential spots along the route that might yield some good images. I found various scenes, from the Missionary Ridge Tunnel, an industrial area near the Norfolk Southern yard, the trestle in Trion, GA, and various scenes in between.
The morning of Saturday March 3, 2018, I departed my house at 5:30 in the morning. With my residence being in central time zone, and 4501 departing the station in Chattanooga at 9:00 eastern, I had to waste no time in order to get to the first location. The trip was fairly uneventful, and having dealt with the craziness of Interstate 24 plenty of times behind the wheel of a tractor trailer, the lightness of early morning Saturday traffic was a welcome change.
I arrived in Chattanooga, and made my way to the industrial park I had selected. Here, the TVRM tracks interchange with Norfolk Southern’s rails. A couple hundred feet down from that junction, another junction leads to the Chattanooga & Chickamauga Railroad’s tracks which lead south to Summerville, GA. Thus, at this industrial area, 4501 stops, first to request clearance from NS to access their rails, and secondly to pick up the C&C pilot, a crewman from the C&CRR who has to be aboard the locomotive while traveling on C&C property. As a result, there would be several minutes that 4501 was stopped, giving me opportunity with a few close up shots to play around with.
I set up my camera at around 9:10AM, ten minutes after 4501’s scheduled departure time. The location was roughly thirty minutes by rail from the museum’s station, so I had plenty of time to shoot test shots and prepare. When I arrived, I was alone, but within five minutes, a small group of foamers—the name given to people who “foam at the mouth” over steam locomotives—had assembled around me. All had entry-level Canon and Nikon DSLRs (like my Canon T6) around their necks and small camcorders on tripods. I felt a bit strange having my still camera on my tripod, but the second 4501’s whistle was heard in the distance, excitement overtook all other feelings as I went to work finalizing my composition, checking my focus, and double, triple, and quadruple checking the scene. The sky was cloudless, and the light was quickly becoming harsh, and I wasn’t sure how the photographs would turn out.
Fortunately, as 4501 rounded the corner into view, everything came together perfectly. The image I had in mind was with 4501’s stack being directly underneath the enclosed gantry over the tracks. Here, I’d noticed how the hot steam exhaust from the stack would condense into thick white clouds as it got trapped under the gantry. It was always so fascinating to me, and I wanted to capture the scene from a different perspective from that as a passenger.
As 4501 came to a stop in front of me, I had a few minutes to play with some long exposures using a neutral-density filter. Ultimately, these didn’t turn out, but two of my other handheld shots did. The first seemed to be overexposed, but fortunately I was able to recover the blown-out highlights and get an image that I was quite happy with.
The second shot I got just as 4501 started to roll. After sitting for several minutes, unused steam in the cylinders condenses to liquid water, which will not compress. If the engineer were to simply open the throttle to admit steam into the cylinders, the hydraulic pressure will rip the cylinder heads from their mounts. Thus, standard procedure is to open drain valves, called cylinder cocks, which are at the front and rear of the cylinder. These allow the water to be expelled from the cylinder, and also produce the iconic clouds of steam as a steam locomotive starts out from a stop.
Just as 4501’s engineer opened the throttle, I captured one of my favorite photos, a close up of the running gear and cylinder as the high pressure steam billowed out of the open cylinder cocks. I was on the shaded side of the locomotive, and the blue tones on the metal make it seem as if the simmering locomotive is cool to the touch, and the scalding steam seems almost inviting.
As 4501 pulled away, the little industrial center cleared quickly of all the rail fans. I left as well, headed to the next point on my planned route. That, however, will be a story for another post.
I hope you've enjoyed these images, and more will soon follow. Please check back soon for the next chapter in the story!
Timothy