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My office has a nice view of the Metra/RI line at 191st St. in Mokena (a.k.a. the Road Construction Project From Hell), right where the CRL lumber run makes its deliveries. The past few days, though, in addition to the usual CRL and IAIS runs, I've seen eastbound UP freights in the mid-afternoon. Is...

Here's some background information on Tech Central Station. It's basically a front for a Republican-connected lobbying/astroturf group. Choice quote: But TCS doesn't just act like a lobbying shop. It's actually published by one--the DCI Group, a prominent Washington "public affairs" firm s...

I see... so a Saturday SWS run, if it could get off the ground, would probably be better than the typical off-peak RI run - except for the possibility of freight interference. For me, though, travel time to the station would have to be considered, as I live about a block away from the downtown Moken...

i wonder why Rock counts drop so much on weekends. Although other reasons have been explored, one hasn't been mentioned: the long, slow slog through Blue Island/Morgan Park/Beverly Hills. That adds 20 minutes to the trip. In general, I'd rather drive than put up with it, although $3/gallon gas, eve...

spRocket, How are you converting your images to 48 bit? I only see 16 bit RAW processing in my Canon Digi-Rebel software... Are you using Photoshop 8 to do the conversion? I currently have PS 7 on my 'puter. Actually, Canon is going by 16 bits per color channel per pixel; combine the red, green, an...

Digital seems to lack the range between hilites and shadow areas. DSLRs tend to have characteristics similar to slide film, particularly when you shoot in JPEG mode. However, they also have a raw mode, which is a direct dump of the image sensor. Such images must be postprocessed to produce useful p...

On March 7, I decided to go for a little road trip. I ended up chasing a UP freight from Woodland Junction to Sidney, IL (pics not on the web for now). I then headed into Champaign-Urbana to check things out, as I went to school there about sixteen years ago. Wonder of wonders, the old semaphore on ...