It started out innocently enough—no one would get hurt, no laws would be broken. Well, maybe one or two, but they were small laws. All I had to do was drop my friend at the designated spot, then (quickly) pick him up when he called. He even bribed me with a couple doughnuts to do this before he told me what we’d be doing.
There’s been a plethora of antique steam engine trains running through Northeast Ohio these past couple weeks. Les (his real name) has been chasing and photographing them. Now, again, he had found the perfect vantage point—maybe. However, avoiding national park rangers (to say nothing of needing a mountain goat in your family history) might be an issue. So, when I agreed to drive the getaway car, (and eat the doughnuts) he sent me photos and aerial images to where this would/could happen. I looked over the info, and other pix I found online, and realized what was missing from all the pictures—action. Movement.
Let me say, being the driver is not the kind of thing you ask some dude who has been a photojournalist for more than 50 years (plus retirement years) to do. Be the driver? The driver? No way. I wanted to be a shooter.
Other than mosquitos trying to eat us alive, things went as planned, until the cops showed up. To protect the guilty I’ll skip the part of how we avoided arrest, but we were suddenly faced with finding a new shooting spot—with the train heading our way. The train was the historic steam locomotive, Nickel Plate Road 765, pulling vintage passenger cars through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
We had to hurry! Let me just say, kneeling on rail track slag is not something an 84-year-old guy (with only one cup of coffee in him) should be doing. Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Plus, nobody told me this thing would be traveling faster than a speeding bullet—alble to leap tall buildings … well, you get the point. In the end, a good time was had by most.
Witt’s End 