I WAS ALMOST RUN OVER BY A TRAIN!

UPDATE! All images in this post are now available for sale as prints in my online gallery.   http://www.steinhauserphotography.com/gallery/buildingsandstructures

So there are these train tracks that run not that far away from my house.  I have to drive over them every day to and from work.  However the overpass itself is in bad shape and last year the state began construction on a new overpass.  It has been a long process that affected the commute of everyone.  Not too long ago the new overpass was opened and everyone was happy.

For a long time I had always wanted to photograph the old overpass from down near the train tracks.  Since the new overpass had opened that meant the demolition of the old overpass could commence.  That also meant that I had a limited amount of time to capture my pictures before the old overpass was gone forever.  Everyday I drove to work I would look over to see how the demolition was coming along.  Last week I noticed that they had the giant jack hammers working on the overpass.  It was basically now or never.

This past weekend I lucked out.  1) The overpass was still intact and 2) None of the construction vehicles were left parked on the overpass, which would have ruined the pictures I wanted to take.  So I made my way down near the train tracks and began capturing pictures of the old overpass.  While taking pictures I discovered that there was more than just train tracks down there.  There were two abandoned stations and two sets of concrete stairs that led up to the road.  What a find!

Near the end of adventure I setup my tripod pretty close to the tracks while I tried to capture an image of one of the stations.  It was too long into taking those pictures that I began to feel a slight rumble in the ground.  I looked down the tracks and saw nothing.  My “spidey-sense” advised me to check behind me and sure enough, there was a big-ass freight train come down the tracks!  I grabbed my gear and moved away from the tracks.  As the train passed I stood there in aww.  It was massive and loud.  After a few moments of frozen wonderment I remembered that I had a camera and should be capturing pictures of this big behemoth traveling down the tracks.  As I was clicking away I kept saying to myself, “man if this thing comes off the tracks I am a goner!” So after a few dozen clicks, I decided to high-tail it out of there.

So there you go.  I stared down the iron beast and lived to tell about it.  If I was run over do you think they would make a funny song for me?  I mean grandma got run over by a reindeer is a smash hit!

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