To organize a photo-trip
Good pictures are always the resulting of good planning. With this motto in my mind i've always tried to plan every photo-trip i was doing all over Italy looking for trains. After some months passed by taking pictures in yards or in the way they were coming to me, the idea of travelling along a certain route to shot to nicest points on the line with that precize kind of train was taking place in my head. I soon discovered paying my bill that one can not adventures himself on a line hoping to take home a roll full of beautiful shots without a plan, overall when on that line there are just few trains per day running. When you add to this, like i had to do in my first years, being car-less and forced to travel by train, organization becomes a must: it seems a nonsense but the best way to take pictures of trains is travelling by car. Move yourself by train means being constricted to timetables and to train stops (obviously excepting the abandoned ones, maybe more interesting of the others), it means to arrive on location with the first train of the day and leaving it with the last, using every mean of trasportation to move yourself from a place to another between two trains just to avoid two similar shots in the same place. And with "every mean of trasportation" i don't exclude autostop or by foot! It became necessary preparing every trip with a sort of attack plan: what's the best way to have under control rapidly timetables of a line, with meetings and preceedings, distances and no-trains periods? The answer came reading some old numbers of a magazine now ceased called Voies Ferres italian edition, where some home made GRAPHIC TIMETABLES were published to explain last services of old group of locos near to the scrap. Graphic timetable is a linear representation on a Cartesian plan where on X line are reported the stations of the line and where the Y line is for the time. The result of its assembling is a serie of lines standing each one for a train running, in one direction or in the other, with stops, etc... After some experiments i choose to use a millimeter paper sheet where i was reporting the 2 axles and where i was assuming for every millimeter the value of 5 minuts on the time axle (12 millimeters = 1 hour). On Y axle i was reporting every five millimeters the name of the stations along the route. Time and station are easily reachable from the official FS time book. It's obvious that more trains run on the route you need, more would be difficult drawing the graphic. You can even use different colors to represent diverse kind of trains, for example to see in a best way trains made by more interesting locos we want to catch and by this using only the remaing trains for our movements. On the same graphic timetable i was used to reporting the station's building position respect to the track, in a way to have always the train stopping in stations lighted up in the right manner. To do this it's indispensable to study very well a map of the line, with the remarkable points (maybe noted in other trips by train or car on the same route), nicer stations, bridges, etc... For this work i've always used the TCI atlas, separated in three books on north, center and south Italy. On these TCI maps - always of good precision - lines and stations are drawned with accurancy; best of all the symbol adopted to identificate a station has even a black dot which means the building position on a side or on the other of the trackage: the thing we desperatly are seeking for! If we know the sun position in the period of time we want to go in a certain place - even if in not exact way - we are able to know at what hour (and by consequence what train) it's best lighted up for our perfect shot. To do this you can even use a piece of trasparent paper with the sun circle around a point and with hours indication reported. On graphic timetables i was used to carry with me i was writing down what stops exclude because ugly, where were cleanest points along the line and other things. Again with my graphic i knew in what periods of the day i had no trains circulating or how many minutes (or even hours!) were lasting to next train arrival and so to the next shot. By this, it was very easy to decide if walking along the main track for some kilometers outside the station (obviously with the maximum caution) to catch the action in full line or to decide of resting in the yard for different views different from those taken before. Now let's study data and graphics of this article, where for example i've taken trains on the Brescia-Piadena line. Once understood the mechanism, it will be even funny to plan some days of photo-trips and results on quantity and overall quality of your shots will pay you back of the long organization made before. Have nice pictures!