>>3058230The funny thing is that one was and so was the other. Track speed is 60mph in this area.
What was perfectly timed was firing the flash array and the location was perfectly selected because minimal light pollution, interference from other vehicles (both were done after midnight) as well as interference from law enforcement, they do their shift change at about the time I did these.
The flash array was 3x Canon 550ex and one Metz CT45 all 4 at full power I'm standing quite a bit away from the locomotives and need the horsepower to throw the light that kind of distance.
For what it's worth, the whole thing sets up in less than two minutes and that location has a straight line of sight for 7 or 8 miles so theoretically if I were to cross the tracks and see the headlight I could set it up in enough time to get the shot.
Not all of them were like that, sometimes I did happen to just get lucky. The ironic thing about this one is I happened upon an engineer swap while coming home from a friends house and I haven't been able to replicate this shot since 2011 when I did it.
