HWGA - Railroad photography contest - Catch 22

bmattock said:
Wow. And I take photos of Amtrak trains all the time. Wow.
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We have a fairly well known local photographer who is known to hang out at the local Amtrak station, tripod and all on the platforms, shooting mostly vintage and special trains and such, and I've never heard of him being hassled at all.

Burlington, in fact, now issues "amateur railfan photographer ID cards" to those who want to shoot on their tracks. I don't have one. Train-trains (if you get what I mean there) don't really interest me that much. Subways and trolleys and monorails do, for some reason.

I've never been hassled (yet?) but I have been told, erroneously, that photography was not allowed in Chicago subway stations. It was on this shoot:

http://omababe.blogspot.com/2008/02/beneath-windy-city.html

Another one where it wasn't me, but a guy on the platform next to me. On the (re)opening day of the Las Vegas Monorail, I was shooting with my big bad terrorist weapon, the Olympus Stylus Zoom, loaded with my ammunition of choice, Fuji 200, and I, a guy with a video camera, and another guy with a huge flamethrower zoom SLR, were all waiting on the edge of the Flamingo platform for a train to take off from the next station coming our way.

As we were waiting, the guy with the flamethrower asked both of us if we had been at the station to the north. He said he was up there shooting and some officer (city cop? transit cop?) told him to stop shooting, reading him the riot act and citing Homeland Security and such. The thing is, there were cameras EVERYWHERE! Of course he just went one station south and kept on shooting. :)

Some pics from that shoot are on line here:

http://world.nycsubway.org/us/lasvegas/

Maybe the incident with Amtrak will get enough media attention to put an end to this {s-bomb}!
 
Several months ago I was told by an Amtrak conductor that I could not photograph on the train. I challenged him and asked for some proof beyond his opinion. He furiously flipped through a huge manual as I asked him to confirm the spelling of his name, the train number and the date. I explained that I would need that information to get a refund for my ticket as the sole reason for a two hour train ride and the immediate return was to photograph on the train.

Realizing that I was really pressing him, the conductor made several cell phone calls with me remaining in front of him. He finally acknowledged that there must have been "some recent change" and I was free to photograph as I wanted.
 
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Why photograph trains from a distance when you can get to ride in the locomotive?

I guess I was a real threat to national security when the engineer let me run the locomotive back to the yard at the end of the day. Jeez, I may have overpowered the two man crew and run that freight train up north and right into the White House.

Actually I got permission and complete access to do a story on a local short line RR. But it was so boring that I could not make a story out of it.
 
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