Trailing and Failing, Again!

NS 205 approaches Stryker, Ohio, in late afternoon. The trailing unit of the two-unit motive power consist is the Wabash heritage unit. I am poised to “fail” in getting an image of it.

Here is Exhibit A for why serious railfan photographers live by the motto of “trail equal fail.” You can’t see all of the markings of the locomotive when the nose is facing away from the camera.

Another reason why trail equals fail: the Wabash flag logo can’t be seen from this side angle.

The grain elevator in Stryker looms in the background as the 205 chases the setting sun toward Chicago.

I really love that bit of railfan photographer wisdom about photographing Norfolk Southern heritage locomotives when they are in a trailing position: Trail equals fail.

I don’t know who created that pithy little saying or when. I first saw it on Trainorders.com in a posting by a guy who takes his railroad photography seriously.

At the time, there were occasional threads about the merits of going out to photograph a heritage unit when it wasn’t leading.

The heritage units had been in service less than a year and some guys were hyper excited about getting all 20 of them “in the wild,” meaning in revenue service on the road.

Someone would post that the NS whatever heritage unit was in the motive power consist of train whatever.

Another guy would reply that it was trailing and, hence, wasn’t worth the effort to get.

That would cause the original poster or someone else to shoot back a reply that suggested that it was imperative to go out and photograph heritage units.

And on and on it went. Somewhere in the dialogue someone would drop the line about trailing equaling failure.

The trail equals fail adage caught my attention because it is brief and to the point. Trail equals fail.

But it also awakened the contrarian in me because it begs the question of “always?”

Like so many definitive “laws,” the trail equals fail bromide doesn’t leave room for gray areas.

I once saw a photograph of the Interstate heritage unit taken from the side as the train crossed a stone viaduct somewhere in the East. It was, in my mind, a quite striking photograph.

But it had a fatal problem. The Interstate unit was not the lead locomotive. So, the photographer failed, right? No, not at all.

On a Saturday in early May I was headed home with a friend after having spent a productive day chasing Nickel Plate Road No. 765 on the NS Chicago Line as it pulled an employee appreciation special.

My friend had been following online the progress of the Wabash heritage unit on train 205. Of course we knew that it was trailing, but what the heck.

Based on the reports, I guessed that we might be able to intercept the 205 at Stryker, Ohio, without having to spend too much time waiting for it.

I knew that I was going to “fail,” but I wanted to get it anyway for one of those silly little reasons that railfans conjure up to achieve “success.”

Earlier that day, we had photographed the New York Central heritage unit, but it had been on static display at the Toledo National Train Day celebration.

It wasn’t “in the wild” and it wasn’t leading anything. Of course it wasn’t trailing, either. So that was a “success.”

Getting the Wabash unit would give me two heritage locomotives in one day. I haven’t had a heritage two-fer since last May and that also was on a day when I was chasing the 765.

Nearly 20 minutes after we had parked in Stryker on the main street in front of a take home and bake pizza store, I heard the 205 call a signal.

Sure enough the Wabash H unit was trailing and, even worse, its nose was facing east.

The second photograph of this four-image sequence is Exhibit A of why some serious railfan photographer concocted the axiom of trail equals fail.

From a composition perspective, it’s a mediocre image. You can barely see that it’s the Wabash heritage unit.

But I got the shot, or should I say I got the heritage unit. I had photographed the Wabash unit a month early at the Akron Railroad Club’s Dave McKay Day in Berea. It was trailing that day, too.

But all is well with the world because I’ve also photographed the Wabash H unit leading a train, twice as a matter of fact.

My friend and I had laughed about photographing the Wabash H unit trailing before the train arrived and after we resumed our journey homeward bound.

He teased me about posting my image on Trainorders and bragging about how TOTALLY AWESOME it is. Thing is, someone on that list actually might think it is a good shot.

I don’t photograph for a living. That is the case with most railfan photographers. It’s a hobby even if many take it seriously and seek to create the best images that they can using the same equipment and techniques employed by professional photographers.

I can see why trail equals fail got started and why many photographers live by it.

Those photographers will say – correctly – that they would not make a special effort to go find a train with a heritage unit in the trailing position. I wouldn’t either.

But this train was nearby, so I invested some time in photographing it. I had fun doing it and isn’t that the point of railfanning?

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Tags: NS Heritage locomotives, NS heritage units, NS Wabash heritage locomotive, NS Wabash heritage unit, trail equals fail