A collection of rail encounters during my runs in and around the Greater Toronto Area, and wherever else I may be. I grew up near the 'coal banks' in Sydney, N.S. and often played on the coal train cars. I'm also an avid runner having logged over 20,000 miles. Here I put them both together.
A lot of my time is taken up working on some renovations so running and certainly hanging around crossings have been curtailed for the time being. I have managed a few outings, mostly early on weekday mornings.
A couple of weekends ago I got a lucky break a caught an early arriving VIA Canadian train #2 trundling down the Bala on it's way into Union Station. I've hung out at this trail crossing a few times but with limited success. There's not much warning for approaching rail traffic and the noise of the nearby DVP tends to drown out the growls of throttled-down engines. Occasionally they wail a horn for someone near the lines where they shouldn't be and that offers some advanced warning. On this day I had to scramble to get the camera ready as I had just arrived. Some sprinkling rain kept me from prepping the camera settings as I usually would have done. A sudden rumble north of the crossing and a gleem of lights off the rails told me it was the Canadian approaching the turn and I wasn't one the side of the tracks I wanted but had to make do with the location to avoid crossing during the warning lights.
Later that week I got up and out bright and early a couple of mornings and put together this sequence of VIA train 52/50 to Montreal and Ottawa followed by regular GO service into Danforth Station off Main Street. The VIA and GO units have similar departure times and often end up side by side on this stretch. No luck catching them that close on that morning but I am hopeful that I can get some footage of that very situation one day.
On Friday before the long weekend I took some time on my return home from work to catch a scheduled GO Stouffville service heading north. The GO trains have a lot of level crossings to deal with on the Uxbridge sub and make generous use of their horns to let traffic know of their approach to these busy roadways. I used my older Sony SD camera which lacks the better image stablization of the CX-250 and shows a bit of wobble, especially when the engineer laid on the horn when exactly next to me.
I also moseyed down McCowan towards the western end of the CP Toronto yards in Scarborough as I've not gone around that area before and it was on the way. Locations are inconvenient but I did catch a pair of GP9Us doing switching duty and shot a bit of footage from a lower level, but not very good positioning at all. I'll need to find more time to scout out a better location sometime. I can't really run out to that area, a further than my current long runs encompass.
And finally I tried some footage off the biking trails in E T Seton park near the high CP rail bridge that crosses over the Don. This location is outside the end of the fence of the Tremco plant near Thorncliffe Park/Leaside and sits high above the valley below and level with the rail crossing for a different angle than most people will see. In late fall to spring it's pretty barren up there and the view is much better, but the summer has lots of foliage in the way. I didn't stay very long but managed to catch a pair of eastbounds with likely empty returns heading for the yards in Scarborough.
early this morning. I'm surprised at how casual people consider railway tracks to be. I see them all the time crossing them, walking across bridges, walking along the tracks often in enclosed areas. When I'm out shooting images or vids of trains, sometimes I'm near some high speed areas. It doesn't take much time for a train doing 70 or so miles an hour to come up on you, especially if it's near a bend in the track as the sound doesn't always make the turn very well. I'm often caught flat footed trying to get my camera turned on when I finally realize a train is rounding the curve and very often I'll miss the shot, it's often just a matter of seconds. Even lower speed trains are deceptively fast, and often much quieter if they are powering down. An approaching GO train at the non-powered is already pretty quiet with the engine 10 cars away, and when powering down it's almost impossible to hear until it's right there. One hopes the operator is aware enough to blast the horn.
Speaking of the operators and engineers, I can't image being in that position where you see someone on the tracks ahead, you blast the emergency horn and thrown on the brakes but there's no way to stop in time and you have to be there witnessing this from the front row. It has to be the most stressful aspect of rail work there can be. It's no wonder the rail security and police are unforgiving when it comes to dealing with tresspassers and barrier crossers.
My main rule for shooting images and vids is to make sure they're taken from legal and safe positions and stress whenever I can that it's a big no-no to venture onto the tracks or poke around inside right-of-ways.
Take this guy for instance:
This is on a busy right-of-way, closed off all around by high ROW fencing, and yet there he is strolling along. I'm surprised nothing came around the bend at that time and I'd be really curious about how the operator would handle this one, particularly since this is a freight line with large, heavy and hard to stop trains. Hopefully it would have a non-tragic ending but you can be sure that many of the strikes are exactly like this, someone tresspassing on rail property and right-on-the-tracks at that.
What's more surprising, I see adults taking their kids over bridges and inside fencing onto tracks and I keep thinking they should know better than that.
A brief trip to Ottawa gave me a small bit of time to scout around the local trackage and see what was happening. Our hotel was a couple of kliks aways from the main VIA Rail station near Vanier Parkway of Tremblant Road. I had been down that area last year scoping out viewing locations. A local trail near the transit road offers good sitelines and for westbound traffic out of the station.
I timed it on Sunday morning to catch train #643 on exit. I had little time for neither running nor fanning so I had to keep my wait period down to a minimum. I arrived about 5 minutes before departure and had enough time to pick an angle and focus points. The trail pathway is however on the northerly side of the tracks which means you don't get a direct sunlit view on departure. Trains will get full sun once they round the bend and turn southward so the morning sun catches them full side, as seen in the Youtube thumbprint.
For this morning, 643 was lead by F40PH unit #6455. I believe the parked unit on the right is #6415 but hard to tell in the shot hear, the original 1080 vid reveals the numbers a bit better but I'm still not positive if it's 6415 or not.
The departure is quite slow. The train doesn't start to throttle up until it rounds the bend so it's a fairly quiet pass. Next time I'm in the area I'll venture down line a bit, there are some level crossings further south that should offer good views and units at higher power output.
I haven't had much time to be out taking images of trains lately. There is a bridge under repair that connects my local area of Taylor Creek with Sunnybrook and it's throughly fenced in until the workers have completed their tasks. If you're familiar with the area, it's the bailey bridge that crosses the CN Bala tracks near Don Mills Road. The area has been undergoing renovations to replace the aging footbridge under Don Mills. That work is completed and now they are doing the decking on the bailey bridge. Before the bridge closure you could still navigate across Don Mills but a deckless bridge isn't very useful. Most people are just going around the fencing and cross the tracks but I have this inate refusal to tresspass on the Metrolinx right of way so I'm staying away from the area until the work is done.
Bala below Doncaster sees not a lot of CN action these days. VIA's Canadian #2 still uses it and Richmond Hill GO service on weekdays, but I haven't seen freight action there in months. CP's Belleville and North Toronto subs are my freight train sources these days. The bridge work at Don Mills makes this less accessible for the time being. I can still get around through the area near Cottonwood Flats if I have time for longer runs. The level CP crossing at Wicksteed needs only 25 minutes for me to get there with the bridge open, but over an hour with the bridge out. Summerhill is more accessible right now and Summerhill has better viewing, albeit not at track level. I did try a few longer shots of the Leaside yard area from Cottonwood Flats but there are just too many trees in the way.
The reliable Kingston sub is always nearby. 6:30AM and on that is one busy line. Mutliple GO trains an hour, plenty of VIA trains coming in and going out. Being wakey wakey with the ever earlier sun shining in through the window and the window opened a crack for air, the Lakeshore line gets mighty noisy. This morning I headed down Woodbine Avenue to the crossing north of Gerard Street just in time to catch VIA combo 50/52 heading to Ottawa and Montreal with it's unique two train tandem.
Blink and you'll miss it:
They don't have the high-speed train warning signs posted everywhere on that line for nothing.
While scoping out some other locations on the streets nearby I'm glad I had the camera rolling here for this GO eastbound unit:
Not the best location, it was over a fence at the base of Westlake Avenue just south of the Danforth, but it was a unique catch. This double-ender had two of GOs refurbished F59PH units, #564 up front and #563 tacked onto the rear. These 59s have to double up to meet the performance demands of 10 car passenger service as they lack the oomph of the MP40PH 4000HP powerhouses on most of GOs trains.
I have run the Boston Marathon. I unexpectedly qualified by running 3:27:30 at the Mississauga Marathon one fine spring day. The next April, my family and I drove down to beantown and stayed in a hotel in Brookline right on the marathon route and about 2 miles away from the finish line on Boylston.
We had perfect marathon weather that Patriot's Day, with cloudy skies, temperatures in mid 50's, light west breeze, it couldn't have been better running conditions and far removed from the blistering temperatures that prevailed that day a year earlier.
When are are one of the runners in Boston on marathon day, you are treated like royalty. People high five you, they nod as you pass, despite the thousands that will toe the line that day they find it amazing that you are there to run it. The day before, during and after, if you are a Boston Marathon runner it really is all about you, or so they make you feel.
The crowds persist over the entire 26.2 mile route. They never seem thinner than 3 rows deep anywhere. The screaming wall of women at Wellesley College can be heard a mile out and is the perfert mid-race pick-me-up. You do have to reign it in a tad to make sure you don't overcook at, since the college sits nearly right on the 13.1 mile marker.
You battle the hills in Newton and your quads seem cooked by 20 miles. I could only discern the infamous Heartbreak Hill by the signs in the area, as the whole region at this point seems like you're either climbing up or scampering down. As you make your way into Boston proper, you see the Citco sign looming into view, the crowds thicken and it gets impossibly louder. If the marathoners are tireless in their pursuit of the finish line, the crowds that scream every number and every name along the way must be twice so, because they start when the first wheelchair athlete passes by and don't stop until the last straggler has is through.
This year, somebody, or some group, decided to take advantage of the openess of the venue, and attack the spectators, the runners, the volunteers, the passers-by, the curious, the media, children, adults, unselective, unforgiving, inhuman. The projectiles that were blasted out of some hidden devices arbitrarily tore through one victim and another, and another, with deadly force, set with utter disregard for the who, all within an instant and without warning.
I don't even understand what this was an attack on. An 8 year old boy? 29 year old woman? Athletes from around the world? Just, people?
Runners will run. People will watch and cheer. This won't change. I haven't run a marathon since 2006 Boston. Maybe that part will change.
It's starting to brighten up out there. However, I will have to have a talk with those gophers that predicted an early spring because it's been anything but for the last several weeks.
I managed to turn an ankle while running frozen trail a couple of weeks ago on some ruts and sidelined myself for a week. I could have run as it doesn't really affect straightline running but I wanted to play it safe, and the less than desireable weather meant I didn't feel too bad about sitting around for a few days.
The trail system is peppered with signs informing users to stay off the trails in muddy conditions as this damages the slopes and really messes up the surface. I've been running them all winter and conditions have been good but it looks like plenty of people ignored the signs when the temps crawled over freezing and the trail was heavily rutted from walkers and a small handful of cyclists. After it froze over, which is when I ran it, it's like cobblestones turned on their edge and I managed to misjudge on a downhill, rolled my ankle and hobbled home. The swelling a couple of days later let me know it needed some rest.
Nonetheless, back at it this weekend and inspected the trails on Sunday. They seemed fine until I got to some messy muddy sections near Bayview Avenue and had to run off-trail. While high in the section near Bayview I heard a consist trundling it's way southbound on Bala near the trial crossing at the 5 mile mark. I had my camcorder with me and was a bit out of position for a clear shot which left me finding a reasonable opening through the trees. Much to my surprise, being a Sunday, it was VIA train #2, the Canadian, running more than a day late after being held up by snowstorms in Saskachewan.
Quite the catch as there isn't much activity on south Bala outside of the Canadian and the weekday GO commutes. I used to see a lot more freight action along this line. For freight action these days I hang out around the level CP crossing at Wicksteed when time allows:
Having now played around a bit with the new camcorder (Sony CX250B) I thought I'd write some notes on its use and performance in case anyone is considering purchasing one or its current incarnation. It previously looked like Sony was reducing options in this segment, but I returned to the .ca website today and see the range is similar although the 250 and 260 versions are no longer offered (the 260 versions shows available on the US website).
The CX250 I have is the same as the more common CX260 versions but without internal memory. Same G lens, imager, processor, interfaces and so on. While I'm plenty happy enough with it, the G lens has some obvious chromatic aberration which is particularly pronounced at long zooms. The winter has made this much more apparent with strong contrasts between bright white snow and just about anything dark in the frame. It becomes even more apparent when you have dark tree branches against a white cloud background.
The low light performance is pretty good and you can get a lot of detail that's hard to see even with dark adapted eyes. I'm quite surprised at how good it is especially compared to my older SX63 standard def. With low lux on (sensor backlighting) you can see stars in the sky and subtle shadings albeit with some definite graininess, but the images are quite usable. I'm hoping to do some night shooting on some busy lines when it warms up outside and compare it to a couple I did with the older 63.
The optical Steadyshot is much better than the electronic version of the 63. You can zoom in near max and still get a usable image, although you'll never completely eliminate the shake without a tripod. Normal wider shots appear rock steady. The optical Steadyshot also avoids the tendency to chase a moving image. With the 63 I had to kill Steadyshot when close shooting a train. If I didn't you could see the background and side areas shift as the camera tried to lock onto the foreground object, which in this case was a moving train and it renders the video unwatchable without feeling seasick. The optical version doesn't do this since it works to reduce physical lens motion. I've been keeping it in optical mode only.
Colours are much better. The 63 always seemed washed out while the 250 is much closer to what you see. It's not up there though with some of the higher end non-pro models. To be fair, I've had mainly dull grey conditions to shoot in, with brighter sunnier summer weather it might show better. The interference with the chromatic aberration cuts into some of the colour accuracy as well since it tints darker areas slightly towards the purple side even when it's not otherwise noticeable.
Autofocus works better than the 63. I think the higher definition has a lot to do with this. Manual focus, as with a lot of these models, is wretched. Much better is spot focus by zooming in preshot and getting it sharp at the critical point, then zooming back. I prefer to disable auto focus when I can to prevent focus motor noise in quiet settings. Mind you, passing trains aren't known for quietness so it hasn't been an issue. It also helps to not have the autofocus jump away at an awkward point.
The white balance is basically indoor, outdoor or auto, with auto just switching between the two. I leave it on auto and so far so good. Manually selecting means I might blow it when outside as the screen is hard to see and detect in bright outdoor light. I have one vid I did (Richmond Hill New Year's Eve GO Train) that would have been great except it was outdoors with incandescent white balance on and everything looked purple.
One peculiarity, I have had to stop/start it a couple of times when it indicated a failure to detect media. Some searching says this can happen if the camera is jostled a bit (shocked) and simply needs resetting. It hasn't happened in a while now so maybe I'm just being more careful in transit. I use a soft case when I run with it held in one hand to keep it from being banged about. I've also noticed the memory card picks up some scoring on the terminals, which I didn't seem to see happen on the 63, perhaps the connectors are a lot tighter in this model. Nonetheless, I've decided to use the USB dongle to transfer content instead of removing and reinserting the card.
Battery life is better than in the 63 even though it's the same capacity battery. A virtue of more efficient circuitry. I think I could get a good hour and a half or more out of a charge and I've only had to recharge once every couple of weeks despite now having 3 batteries on hand. HDMI connector works great, I could use a longer cable though, this one is a bit short and stiff when connecting up to the TV.
That G lens tho, it's a shame about the chroma issue because it's otherwise quite sharp and zooms well. The Zeiss lens on the 63 also had chroma issues so it seems a trait to all of the lower end Sony camcorder lenses. I have no experience with the higher ends or the SLR lenses to compare. If I keep the zoom to a reasonable level it's pretty decent. A lot of the higher end cameras keep the zoom range down anyway to more modest 10x or 12x instead of 33x or 55x. A sort of a paradox that lower end cameras have longer zooms, I guess because that's what sells. Nice to have if you want it but I need to discipline myself to avoid the long zoom in the interests of quality.
Audio was really good in the 63, with Dolby digital stereo. Same on this one and it is selectable in two steps of sensitivity. You get a good rumble on the low end and the stereo has great separation. It also has a jack if I want to upgrade but I don't see too much of a reason beyond reducing some of the clicking and clacking as I work the controls and maybe get more low-end thump from a better external.
Bottom line, it works pretty well. I've been recording in 1080 60i (instead of the max 1080 60p) at max quality. I haven't seen any diff between 60i and 60p and 60i saves a lot of disk space. I use windows movie maker to reduce the vids down for upload to youtube in 720 30P to preserve bandwidth since we're on Rogers and they cap limits to 80 gigs before adding a hefty per-gig-surcharge, and that's between 4 of us in the house sharing it.
This will do for a while. I might start pining for a Panasonic 720 or higher down the road. We'll see how it images in bright summer weather with high overhead sun. I did some test vids yesterday in bright morning sunshine and they looked quite smashing without noticable chroma, but that was all wide angle.
I think about how it compares to cameras from the past, big clunky things that sat on your shoulder with crappy resolution, tape media and iffy colour. These cameras are tiny, much less expensive and blows all of those old units away.
My channel is here if you wish to peruse some of the content. All of the HD entries are shot on the 250 while the SD entries use the 63.
