I got a lot of comments about this image, so here is the story.
About 10:45 PM on a Friday night this train derailed 24 or it's 80 cars on this trestle - no one was hurt - 8 of the deralied cars carried ethyl alcohol (30,000 gallons each) and 1 or 2 exploded pretty much on impact and another at 1 am. Seven square blocks of the town was evacuated as a precaution. I got these pics on saturday morning about 11 am.
Since alcohol is not really all that toxic, and due to the difficult accessability the decision was made to let the fire burn itself out. It burned for abou 30 hours, and 2 hours or so after that Norfolk Southern had trains running on this trestle - they laid the new track in that 2 hours! I wish I had pics of that!
Last i heard the cause of the accident was under investigation, but speeding wasn't it.
Wow, that is just amazing. Glad no one was hurt. Great shot, thought it would fare better with the voters.
It suffered technical issue IMO - the lighting was not great, the direction for one gave me some lens flare and bad contrast, and then the sun was out on white/gray cars and the darker ones were in teh shade so the overall range of tones was more than digital can capture. I could have worked on that I suppose, and a b&w is better in some ways but then you lose the orange of the fire and that's no fun!
Humor often does not do well on DPC, so my title may have hurt me some. The alternative was "Train Wreck: Film at 11!" and may have done better, but I liked the funny one more.
And a train wreck is not much of an artistic type subject. A closer shot would have been better, but I liked the overall and the fire engine in teh BG.
How far away from there were you when you took these shots. Looks like you were up on a Hill or a Rooftop. The clean up efforts must have made great entertainment.
Thanks for the additional info -- amazing no one was hurt, and very lucky that it was ethanol and not chlorine or reprocessed reactor rods or something.
It might have had more impact as a PJ shot if you'd been able to avoid (remove?) those branches in the foreground -- I think that would take away much of the sense of distance and make it seem more like you were "right on the scene."
Unless it's a PJ challenge, folks here don't vote those very high, even when they're really well done.
