I first attempted to post this last night, but when I looked at it, I felt heartsick. It fell so short of the picture I had intended to take I decided not to post it at all. For one, I had anticipated I would hear the whistle when the train passed by Wal-Mart, a few minutes away and this would give me time to position Sancho in just the right spot. But I didn’t hear the whistle at all. Maybe the wind was wrong. I didn’t know the train was bearing down on my position until I saw the lights come on at the train crossing a few hundred yards up the track. I barely had enough time to launch Sancho and fly him to this spot ten or 15 feet too low and 20 feet too close and had to shoot at this moment. I had also planned to slow the shutter down to 1/15 of a second so I could get a streak of motion blur of train and headlights but chickened out because I feared the vibration of Sancho’s whirring engine and spinning props would cause camera shake. I wanted termination dust (early snow) atop Flat Top Mountain to be sharp. With my ISO set at 1600, I/50 of a second wide open at 2.8 was the fastest I could shoot and still get a decent exposure. So that’s what I did. I was so disappointed with this resultant image I decided not to post it. But now, as I prepare to download the pictures I took this morning of the one passenger train now in the schedule, I decided to post it anyway. The termination dust with its statement of impending winter and the tiny flare of Northern Lights in the northeastern sky are not likely to come together with the train again for me in quite this manner. 9/5/20 Photograph courtesy of Bill Hess