Higher ground

The winter here in Ottawa just won't let up, which I suppose is a sign that the climate is behaving at it normally does. Silver linings. As I write this, I am watching more late snow fall. Recently, during the March Break, a friend of our family made her way up to Ottawa for a visit. She arrived by train at Fallowfield Station. I took the opportunity to tag along for the pick-up, just in case there was something worthy of a photograph.

I'm sure some of you are thinking, Oh great, he's going to share another Via shot from Fallowfield. I can understand this reservation. I have tried to avoid Fallowfield to be honest, as I really can't see many more opportunities to see something interesting there worth sharing. But in this case, I knew there was something that might make for some interesting photos.

A small preface to the first photo. Amazingly, as my wife and I tracked our guest's progress from Toronto Union, we were stunned that her Venture set, Train 52, was right on time. I scratched my head over that, until one of my railway sources, with inside knowledge, told me that 52 was part of a J-train, as it was joined with a Montreal-bound Venture set all the way to Brockville. That would allow the train to avoid the curious CN speed restrictions on the Ventures, since it would have more than enough of the required axles to activate the signals. I won't get into that story, as I have touched on it in a past post. Go to Trackside Treasure for the full details. Eric Gagnon has done yeoman's work detailing the finer points of this fight between CN and Via over whether the new Ventures are a safety risk for CN crossings.

Anyway, with the Venture set on home rails from Brockville to Ottawa, the train arrived right on time, as there are no restrictions on Ventures on Via's own network (and somehow, the crossing guards all seem to work!). But, back to the problem of Fallowfield. What was the point of taking a boring extreme-angle wedge shot from the edge of the platform? I've already seen far too many of those in my own blog as well as on the railfan Facebook pages with Ottawa content.

But, lo and behold, there was an enormous snow pile on the east end of the station parking lot, which was about a storey and half high. And, the Venture set was the all-yellow set nicknamed Lumi. So the elevation shot was what I was after. It's one of the few blessings of this Ottawa winter. A drone shot, if you will, minus the expense of a drone.

This shot gives you a much different perspective of Fallowfield. It shows you how difficult it is to get a shot without cars blocking your view. This is why you almost always see shots from Fallowfield as tight wedge shots. I think those shots are getting boring, so I try to avoid them when I can. I like this shot because it puts everything into perspective. I wonder if the person backing up their pickup was wondering what I was doing on top of a massive pile of snow. I know my wife was shaking her head on the station platform. 

After getting my elevated shot, I thought of a few other different perspectives I wanted to get, just to see if I could find other different perspectives that bring this late winter scene to life. After coming down from higher ground, I decided to get low. Very low.

As I said, I don't like these tightly angled shots from the platform, unless I can do something that makes the image a bit more interesting. I took a few shots with the salt box out of the photo, but I found this shot to be more interesting. The grey sky certainly helped make this yellow train stick out. As I was in the mood for different shots, I figured something patriotic might be fun as well, hence the maple leaf below.

One other shot that I thought I would try. I've been experimenting with these slice-of-life platform shots for a while, trying to ensure I am not identifying anyone in the photo. I like this one, although this passenger is a bit lost amid the vehicles. I would have liked a cleaner shot of her on the platform. I had to be careful because I didn't want to take any obviously intrusive or unflattering photos of people. I made sure to keep my distance and take a shot with an iPhone discretely. That way, no one is identified and no one is alarmed.

So that was my recent experiment in getting some different shots at Fallowfield. I was thankful that the Lumi consist provided such an interesting contrast to an otherwise blustery, grey day in mid-March. 

In recent weeks, I've made some small trips around the city to chronicle the O-Train's newly operational southern extension (which is now part of the Trillium Line or Line 2 as it is also known). These diesel trains seems to be handling the job with no problem. I even made a quick trip to Walkley Yard, or as close as I could get to the yard legally. With CN's presence in the city but a blip these days, this trip proved to be quite informative. Stay tuned.