Tehachapi Loop, by Moonlight

Here is one of the worlds most famous curves, Tehachapi Loop taken on the night of January 22, 2005. With a beautiful near full moon, this is a 19 minute exposure starting at 6:56 PM. This is a southbound train coming up grade. It starts with the bright light in the middle left of the picture, this is Woodford siding, and continues down then across to the bridge over Tehachapi creek, then back across and down to curve into tunnel 9 and comes out of tunnel 9 and around the loop and into tunnel 10. The bright straight line across is highway 58. If you look at the lower left corner you can see the state historical markers for the Loop that are at a little lookout on the Tehachapi-Woodford road.
What luck! This is the first time I've ever tried one of these, and I had eight chances to get a good exposure. I had eight trains in the span of two hours just after sunset. One sounthbound, one northbound and six more southbounds one right after another. In some shots I had as many as three trains. I just kept changing the f-stop until I got this one. It was taken at f10 on my Canon Digital Rebel with the EF-S 18-55mm lens.
Then I had to drive home to Bakersfield, down into that fog that is in the middle left of the picture near the two red lights (which is a cellular telephone tower). It sort of looks like a lake, but it's the San Joaquin valley's Tule (pronounced Too Lee) fog.
This was a great catagory for me this month. The Tehachapi's have lots of "Curves".


Daylight