Hi, Jim--Interesting post about your recent travels through NM and CO ahead of the blizzard. I have a comment and a question. First, the question.
Since Raton Pass is private property and is marked as such and heavily fenced, is it possible to shoot anyplace there without getting a load of buckshot in one's rear-end or be detained by the RR police? I mean at the top of the pass itself, not down the hill toward the city of Raton. I shot an EB Amtrak there at the top of the pass from the behind the parking lot of the weigh station or agricultural check-point or whatever that facility is just off the interstate (I saw a bear come down off the mountain one morning as well). The track is within a few yards at this point, but it is not visible as it goes through the tunnel at the top of the pass here and you cannot see the track until it gets about a mile away. The tracks were so far away on the north side of the pass that they were just about impossible to see with the naked eye, but this will make a super photo with a 300mm lens (or more) in the vertical format. The going-away train had very nice early evening lighting on its side and is still tiny on the slide with that big lens, but you can see several ridges of mountains receding away into the distance above the train. The scene looks like it could be an Amtrak ad or poster and is not your typical railfan-type photo, but you Western SPORRS folks might want to check this site out if you have not done so already. On the south side of the pass for WB trains, there is one good place that I know of where you can pull way off the interstate and park on the ground in an "unofficial" access area used by the railroad signal maintainers or whomever, but it is not on RR property according to signs on the fence. The track comes down the pass and sweeps around a big curve there in the immediate foreground, and good shots can be made from over the fence with a zoom lens with the signals framing the photo. I wanted to shoot the WB Amtrak train snaking around another very distant curve at the top of the grade with a 600mm lens from this same vantage point, but he was running late and I heard nothing on the radio announcing his impending arrival, so I was not paying attention and he had rounded that distant curve before I spotted him. I shot him with the other camera which had the 80~200 zoom lens and was more than happy with the results except for the clouds that had crept in during the 1-1/2 hour wait for the late train. Besides these two spots that I have mentioned, are there any other places to shoot photos of Raton Pass without hiking a mile or two to some remote spot? I have bad arthritis and cannot walk very far anymore. Thanks. John B. --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects
