Alexander RR

Over the years, a shortline that I came accross, was the Alexander RR. I was driving accross NC and there was the bridge with the RR name on it. I followed it to the end of the line and took several pictures in their engine house.

Alexander RR, no. 3. 

Alexander RR, no. 6.

I decided a new visit to the Alexander RR was in order. However, things do not alway go the way you want, or even expect. I drove from Statesville to Taylorsville not finding anything. I did get a picture of their business office/station.

The only thing on the scanner was Sherriff office chatter. Until I returned and got almost back to Statesville. There was no. 10, swithching out of an industry. I stopped to get my camcorder ready, just ahead of the crossing arms. Than the arms came down and before I could get into position, it had passed. In railfan fashion, I sped to catch the train and all I got this 5 second shot.
Guess what? It dissapeared.. Not exactly, but it was switching some cars behind a building and I could not get around to video. From there, I did not see it again. I did get a coulple of pictures of Engine no. 6, parked on the side of the road.



I will go back, maybe the next time I need to cross NC.

On Pictures and Video of trains

The Internet has given a different understanding of the term, to take pictures. In the old days it was the physical act of taking up camera, looking through the viewfinder, and snapping the picture. This was often followed up by waiting for the processed film to be returned and sorting the pictures. Occasionally, at least in the railroad photography, you might be given or purchase a group of pictures. However, today, we can search the Internet and download pictures and video directly and without further cost. The same holds true for video. On the net, this will include old footage of film transferred to video.

There are three means of saving online pictures and videos. First, is the direct copy of the media directly to your hard drive. This is easier for pictures but harder for videos. I use to do these but have since removed them from my computer. This can be good so that the video conforms to personal standards. I rarely video and entire freight consist, but will a passenger consist. If I were to copy, I would edit it to conform to standard.

The next is the embedding into a web page. This works for blogging and doing personal pages. The video is never on your computer and it location is easy to determine. The only problem is that you have the entire video to watch, not edited to standard. This is a good method if storage is a problem. I do this for personal use, I copy the author and description into a web page and save it as I would save a video or picture.

The last option is to link to the video. The viewer has to go to the site to view.

A real problem with these last two, is that they are download each time you view. This can be slow. A video you save will be faster to access.