Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec - FriendsOfCumbresToltec.org

487 has gone to the tank for water and does a blow down while there as it gets ready for a 8 am departure on the advanced school train. Then some nice steam in the 40 degree air.

Sunrise at Cumbres this morning - looks like a great day for a train ride!

The advanced students are doing some yard shifting before leaving and the cool morning air is creating some great steam.

489 is now getting ready for 216 and again beautiful steam in the air. The student train gets underway with 487 making a wonderful plume of steam and smoke.

Great captures Sharon! Gorgeous steam views today -- video of all will come later.

Thanks Larry, what retirement will allow you to do.

Just an aside question...
How does one capture stills or video from the web cams?
Thanks

Mark Sigmon wrote:Just an aside question...
How does one capture stills or video from the web cams?
Thanks

Well on most MS computers you press 'ctrl' and "print screen" at the same time which copies the screen to the clipboard. Once that is done I use Paint to paste the shot and save it before I pull it into my photo editor for final work. There are actually photo capture programs which you can buy to do it also, I am just a simple lady who does it the old fashion way.

Mark Sigmon wrote:Just an aside question...
How does one capture stills or video from the web cams?
Thanks

Mark we can't tell you all our secrets!!!

I use a program called Bandicam - it's available inexpensively, I think there may be a trial version. Simply frame up what I want to capture and hit record or I can capture as a still image. I do further video editing with other software, but the capture part is quite simple.

Train 216 gets moving out of Chama on this cool September morning in Chama.

If you use a Windows computer, there is something called "Snipping Tool" that I believe has been a standard inclusion since Windows 7 and possibly earlier. It is great for grabbing "still" images.
You click on it and then click "new" when there is something on your screen you want to grab. You use the curser to frame the portion of the screen image that you want, and then you can save it and/or paste it somewhere.

As a teacher, I have found "Snipping Tool" to be an invaluable tool for placing images onto Power Points and for other things (like posting to this forum).
It is a simple "copy and paste" type tool that lots of people have had in their computers for years but never knew.

Jeff

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487 leads the in bound school freight and heads right to the wye. 215 can't be that far behind considering the time. They left quite a few cars out on the line for, I guess, pick up tomorrow.

Less than 10 minutes later 484 brings a 9 car train 215 into Chama.

484 has taken the passenger consist to the wye and 487 is coming back to do some switching in the yard. We have a young railfan in the making here.

I'm working on the edits for all of today's video - but here's one to start. Runs about 15 minutes, and it's the great steam show 487 was putting on this morning doing the yard switching.



09-16-15 Advanced School Train departs - nice looking train with great smoke!

09-16-15 Train 216 Departs with 489 in the lead. Left the yard without a hot locomotive for the first time in a few days.

09-16-15 The yard was quiet until just after 4pm when the school train returned. Interesting how many cars were dropped off, as this is the last day of the school (per the C&TS website). Perhaps Pete can fill us in later on the whereabouts of the various cars. I would guess the gray MOW car that left will end up in Antonito for the MOW charter.




09-16-15 Just about 10 minutes later 215 came in with 484 in the lead.



09-16-15 487 finishes putting it's train away, 484 comes back after turning at the wye. Both locomotives are now getting their daily service. Another fantastic day at the railroad!

09-16-15 - Thought I'd add something from the old cameras today. Enjoy!

School train left with the MOW car, the 5 pipe cars (3 idler flats and 2 open ended gons), 2 drop bottom gons, a passenger gon, a box car and the caboose.
One of the drop bottoms was set out at Lobato for pick up on the return trip.
From Lobato, we went to Cumbres where the MOW and pipe cars were set out and the tank cars were picked up. Evidently all of these cars will be used in future specials.
On the way to Los Pinos we encountered a couple of delays due to cattle on the tracks. The change in the color of the aspen is becoming quite pronounced.
Leaving Los Pinos, we discovered a problem with the brake rigging on one of the tank cars. It took about 30 minutes to fix the problem so we could proceed.
At Osier, the train completed turning on the loop just as 216 arrived.
Following lunch, we headed back to Cumbres and had only one additional delay due to cattle on the track.
At Lobato we picked up the drop bottom gon that had been set out that morning. With this move 215 was about 15 minutes behind.
This was the last day of the school train.
It was a lot of hard work but a tremendous amount of fun. All of the instructors were line engineers, firemen and conductors and were universally good at not only their job but also their ability to instruct. This school really gave me an appreciation of the work done by C&TSRR railroaders.

BTW, it appears that 216 will be a double header on 9/17.

Thank you for the report, Pete. Very cool!

Jeff

Pete - thank you for your reports the last few days, they have been very informative, and appreciated. Congratulations on getting through the school!

Paul Nielson wrote:Alright I understand how to do the still photos but how do you get the movie clips from the cameras in Chama ?

Paul

Paul there are likely several software programs you can use, I use a program called Bandicam - very easy to use and does the job quite nicely as you can see with what I post. I know VLC media player will also allow screen captures of video, however it's not quite as easy a software to use. I'm sure there are many others, but those are the two I know of.

Larry
You're welcome. I figure its easier to let everyone know what was going on rather than have a lot of speculation.
What I didn't mention in yesterday's report was the wind. When we started out it was cool and slightly overcast. We were wondering if there might be rain up at Cumbres. However by the time we got there what I would estimate as a 15 - 20 mph breeze (?) was blowing. It seemed to increase as we moved on to Osier. It was really interesting in the cab. Any ash which was on the boiler or walkways ended up in the cab. Also we had to check which way the wind was blowing before attempting blowdowns (something about spitting into the wind). My fellow students that were in the rider gon were not too happy when I did one blowdown near Los Pinos. It missed the cab but got them directly.

Now I just have to work the kinks I acquired out.
It's nice that this class is limited to 6 students (we had 5) as opposed to the Fireman and Engineer schools which can have up to 6 of each position since you get much more hands on experience. The bad news is you have far less time to recover from the physical tasks than you do in the earlier courses. That being said I'd go back and do it again if the timing was appropriate.

Regarding the timing of the course, Ed Beaudette mentioned that he tried to schedule this course between the regular summer season and the Fall colors. This timing was selected so that there would not be quite as many regular train riders wandering around in the yard while the students were banging cars around. That being said, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday had some pretty full trains.

Thanks Pete. Really appreciate the inside info and first-hand account.