Odd the things you can find on a hard drive

I was going through one of my external hard drives last night when I ran up on this shot --



It's not that I had forgotten about it, but when I saw it, it gave me a shock. I barely remembered it, the taking it part or the having it part. I was immediately on guard because I had a hard drive failure several years ago where a lot of my high resolution stuff was lost forever/ So now when I find an old shot, I have to make sure it's larger than, say 1024 pixels wide. And this one was!

What also makes this find cool is that this is a shot I cannot get any longer. If you read through my blogs, you know how particular I am about this kind of stuff. But the railroad in the shot sold off most of their smaller engines. Railfans call them "end cabs" or "buttheads." I believe the butthead name comes from when they run with the crew cab first or either when they run with the cabs closest. The cabs are on the end of the locomotive, thus that nick name.

From what I can tell, I never shared it online, whether on my Flickr account or on Facebook. And I bet I know why. Those power lines probably drove me crazy. Yes, I could clone them out. But that drives me crazy, too. And I never feel like I have really cloned them out. Even if no one else can tell, I still see the power lines. Then there is, in my mind, the ethical question. Web sites such as Railpictures, as well as leading railfan magazines such as Trains, frown upon cloning anything out. The thought process is that if someone sees my photograph and wants to go to the same location to shoot their own shots, they may be in for a surprise. Also, coming from a journalistic background, cloning anything out is not only frowned upon, but could get you fired.

So there at sit on my hard drive for nine long years until last night when it suddenly jumped out at me. And now it's here on FAA for you to look at, too. I hope you enjoyed the shot... and the story behind the shot.

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