An introduction to trainspotting

What is this trainspotting thing all about?
Going out to see, listen to and or photograph trains. Sounds weird? No it’s actually good fun and you get to see the world, read on.

What is in your camera bag?
My standard equipment for trainspotting tours where I have to carry my own bags (i.e. I am not getting straight into a rental car at the airport) are two film bodies (at the present an eos 33 and eos 100), my trusty 50mm f1.8 mark I, a 70-80 f4 L zoom, and a pentax takumar 35mm f4 mounted on an eos adapter (cheaper than a canon, and just as good). I also carry a polarizer for the shorter lenses and a 1.4x tc. One body is actually a backup but I’ll usually shoot with both, one paired with the 50mm and the other with the zoom. Most participants on tours have a similar setup, usually with something like a 28-70mm zoom instead of my fixed 50mm. Using two cameras reduces lens changes and prevents dust and dirt getting inside the camera. I only use Fuji 400 asa film. Considering the subject matter, trains which can move pretty fast, you need to be able to freeze the action whenever you want to. Many photographers persevere with 50 or 100 asa, because fast film is supposed to be so grainy. Maybe they are right but I’ve seen many photos made by photographers I respect, with lack of depth of field or with motion blur due to using unsuitable slow shutter speeds. I’ll gladly trade a reduced maximum enlargement size for guaranteed depth of field and no motion blur. Modern 400 asa film can easily be enlarged to 20x30cm, the largest I’ve ever needed. The films are scanned for any postprocessing needed. What about a tripod? Well it didn’t fit into my bag and isn’t all that useful. I’ll tell you why later.

But why go to Zimbabwe?
Well that’s because we like Mugabe, no we don’t just like him, we love him. Thanks to him the economy of Zimbabwe has collapsed. He’s responsible for the trade boycott. He’s made dieseloil scarce and the purchase of modern railroad rolling stock impossible. Thanks to him the last articulated Garratt steam engines are still in daily use. And we’re going to photograph them. There are daily shunts with Garratt class 14A, 15A, 16 and 20A in Bulawayo, and sometimes the commuter trains are steam hauled. There’s a railway museum there too. Hwange colliery uses Garratt class 15A to shunt and transfer trains to the state railway. Likewise Selebi Phikwe coalmine in Botswana uses a Garratt class 14A and class 19D engines. There is also a Garratt class 14A stationed in Vic. falls for operating the tourist train.

How does an organised trainspotting tour work on the ground?
The tour operator has arranged for us to see all the working engines. These arrangements can be as simple as getting permission to photograph the normal operation, altering the timings of normal operations so the light will be at its best or renting the entire train and paying for it to run on a certain line. The last is then called a photo special. For those who are not familiar with the term “photographers special” a short explanation.
This is a train hired by a group of rail enthusiast (passionate photographers). The group travels on the train to a pretty or characteristic location. The group then get off the train and walks along the tracks or into the hills. Once everyone has reached a good position, the train is reversed until it is out of sight. Then the train comes along the track again passing the photographers (who then take pictures and shoot video), making plenty of steam and smoke until it disappears out of sight. It will then reverse back to where it first stopped and allow the group back on board.
We call this a run past. If the train is stationary during the operation it’s called a photo stop. This is then repeated many times during the day. If a photo special has at least 10 run pasts we call it a hardcore tour. I only join hardcore tours. Tours with fewer photo stops are usually touristic of nature, with a good breakfast to waste the best light, plenty of beer on board the train so you miss the sunset and extensive use of toy cameras in between.
Frequent photo stops partially explain the reluctance to use a tripod. Repeatedly climbing off the train, running up the hills, always in a hurry, make the use of a tripod tiring.
Ok so you’re weak, you need to work out at the gym for a while and you’d be alright, so go ahead bring your tripod along. Now consider this. A train is a moving object. A steamengine has steam and smoke to worry about. You might set up your tripod, as for a car race, having thought out the shot in advance. The train approaches, but when the engine is at the desired position suddenly the wind blows some steam in front of the engine. No shot. But some distance down the road you see a second opportunity. So now you grab you camera bag and run. After a while you drop your bag so you can run faster. Your lungs need more air, you really should have spent more time at the gym. But somehow you just get there in time and nail the shot. The sorry soul lugging a tripod is just approaching the spot were you dropped your bag. Nice of him to watch over it, you say, but he’s not in any mood for a joke. He’s got no shot. Next run past you’ll find he has surprisingly left his tripod on board.
I’ll only pack a tripod if I expect good night shot possibilities (my mosquito net took its place in my bag on this tour). Of course if you’re the athletic type and can cover 100m in 10 seconds carrying a heavy camera bag and tripod, please bring it along.

What’s the best time to photograph trains?
As for any photographic subject you need good light. Even in winter and spring with short days the sun soon gets very high in Zimbabwe being close to the equator. Morning and evening are the best time to photograph. Glint shots just after sunrise and before sunset are sought after. Once the sun is too weak you can silhouette the train agains the evening sky.
We don’t like dark driving wheels, but it depends on the type of loco how long the midday break has to be to prevent this. As on all tours, photographers of differing experience levels participate. Some less experienced guys feel they need to be taking pictures all day long, and the tour operators oblige by only having limited break at midday, if at all, when actually a 4 hour break would be better. Of course this is all theory, if the only train of the day runs at noon there’s not much you can do about it.

It’s africa, surely it’s dangerous? What’s the country really like?
Pictures in the press concentrate on showing the worst of Zimbabwe, the occupied farms and lately the destruction of some squatter camps. Yes the country is mismanaged. Fuel is scarce, inflation is 250% this year. Most people manage, but only just. Food is available, but may soon not be affordable for many. In general wherever you go normal people are extremely friendly.
Even though we didn’t meet anyone who supported the present government, there is no indication this will lead to unrests or civil war. Except for certain areas in Harare we drove through, I didn’t feel unsafe anywhere. There are very few weapons visible if at all.
There is no reason you shouldn’t still visit Victoria Falls and go on wildlife safari. Major towns have a british feel. Food in restaurants and snack shops in distinctly british.
It used to be one of the wealthiest african countries, which still shows in the buildings and infrastructure. But like the railway system, most of the infrastructure is now living on borrowed time. If nothing is done about the economic crisis soon standards will fall. Even now it’s hard, if not impossible to hire a reliable vehicle (car, van or bus) anywhere, and you have to be prepared to buy fuel on the black market with hard currency. Trains and buses are crowded, don’t expect a high standard of comfort. At least first class on the trains should give you a seat. The largest towns are linked by a daily sleeper (train). Buses are quicker and run more frequent, but it’s unbelievable how many people can be squashed into them.

And what did your spouses do while you were having fun?
Wives and girlfriends don’t come along on hardcore tours unless they’ve been mindwashed, er.. sorry I mean thoroughly trained in the art of railway photography. I did however once meet a spotter whose wife actually carried his tripod around for him….

What happened on the tour

I met the other members of the Farrail tour at Frankfurt and Harare airports depending on the flights taken. Nationalities were british, canadian, austrian, german and swiss. There were between 18 and 16 people in the group (some departed early due to other commitments, some arrived late). Three shot video, the others stills. The still cameras ranged from Hasselblad via SLR/DSLR to upmarket digital P&S cameras. Due to delays, rebookings and short transfer times one person lost his checked luggage, which was never seen again. No great loss as all photographic equipment was carried in hand luggage. Clothes and toilet articles could be easily purchased locally.
In Harare we visited the dieselworkshop, before boarding the nighttrain to Bulawayo, which covers a distance of approx. 500 km. This train is scheduled to depart Harare at 21.00 and arrive Bulawayo at 6.40. In reality it left at 22.00 and didn’t arrive until 15.00 the next afternoon. This was due to the signaling being out of operation (and there is no money for repairs). This means that at every signal the driver and the guard both have to use CTC radio to call the traffic controller and get permission to proceed. The fact that even the smallest siding has at least 2 signals and the weight of our train (over 20 coaches), made for very slow progress. There was no water in toilets or washbasins, and the showers which were present, clearly were not of any practical use and hadn’t been for some time. The beds were reasonably comfortable (however even a wooden plank is comfortable after a night in an airplane economy class seat).
We played games like “spot the largest cockroach” and “catch the cockroach” as there were plenty running around in the sleeping compartments. Telling stories of previous tours, watching the landscape pass by and the locals gatherings at the intermediate stations made the time pass quickly enough.

Because of our late arrival we only got 2 hours of Garratt class 15A shunting action at Bulawayo that day before we had to head off to Hwange in our rental cars, a new Kia van, a fairly new Volkswagen polo (which later developed a clutch problem and only just made it back to the rental agency) and two ancient Volkswagen golfs (one of which had fuelpump problems). Our hotel in Hwange, like the other hotels we used, wouldn’t get a star rating by any standard, but was selected by its proximaty to the places we needed to be. Most rooms only had a bath and no shower. As the bathtub didn’t look very appealing to lay down in we splashed some water around and went to bed only marginally cleaner than before. Coalmine dirt, lack of good light and suitable electrical outlets for shaving and above all lack of sleep would soon give us the typical “we’re on a hardcore steamtour appearance” which would easily get you a free bed in a salvation army hostel anywhere in Europe.

We visited the Hwange colliery which was operating two Garratt class 15A engines. We had to sit in a park under the shade of a tree for three hours while our tour leader tried to get access. We tried to be inconspicuous because we were directly next to a petrol station with long queues of cars waiting for petrol. Apparently there’d been a rumour that there would be a delivery of fuel that day. Any suspicion of us taking pictures of this could have caused question to be asked. Just try to prove you aren’t BBC journalists when you’ve got bags and bags of camera equipment all over the place.

Our visit had been arranged in advance, but it took time to find someone who knew something about anything and even longer to finalize the paperwork. Then we had to find a suitably senior person to sign it. Anyone who’s been to Africa knows how long these things can take.

We spent a day in Selebi Phikwe in Botswana. The drive there took most of a day including more than 2 hours spent at the border. Forms had to be collected, filled out and stamped. Queues had to be negotiated. Passports shown. Currency declared. On the Zimbabwe side you had to recognize “the man” (who didn’t wear a uniform) who determines who can jump the (long) queue. At first our tourleader had insulted him by pushing past him to get some forms. Some other guys of our group managed to befriend him so in the end we did get priority. Without priority we might still be there.

Access to the coalmine was easy compared to Hwange. We were in and photographing within half an hour. The only ridiculous piece of bureaucracy was that we all had to enter the serial numbers of our cameras on a form, which was never checked on entry or exit from the site. We made shots in the depot and lineside of class 19D engines.

During our tour we also chartered various trains.

- A photo special (passenger) from Victoria Falls to Livingstone (Zambia) with a class 14A Garratt to get the “steamtrain on the bridge over the falls” shot. While we were there, we of course took some “normal” waterfall shots as well (from the Zambian side). After spending hours trying to get fuel for our rental cars the group split up. Three of us drove back to Hwange to do some late afternoon linesiding. This was a gamble as there may have been no activity that afternoon, but it paid off and we got really great results in what proved to be the best light of the tour. The rest spent time at Victoria Falls and returned to Hwange after dark. Later they tried to convince us that their waterfall and crocodile farm pictures were far better than our 15A class unusually hauling a loaded train in the best evening light, but of course we didn’t buy that….

- A photo special (freight) from Bulawayo to Sawmills with a class 15A Garratt. For unknown “african” reasons we left over two hours late, so missed some of the best light. In the evening rebuilding the train at Sawmills, took so long we missed the evening glintshots. Then the train developed a problem with a leaking steampipe. We finally didn’t get back until after 3.00 (early morning next day), and it got rather chilly in the guards van, without doors or glass in the windows.

- A photo special (freight) from Bulawayo to Cement with a class 20 Garratt, which left almost punctual (it was only 30min late!), and actually got us back the same day!

- A photo special (freight) from Thomson Junction to New Hwange with a class 15A Garratt.

Because we had first hand experience that the nighttrain can be extremely delayed, we hired a bus to take us to the airport in Harare, a distance of approx. 500km on quiet and good, tarred roads. We left at 5.30 giving us nearly eight hours to get the plane. We could easily do 100 to 120 kmh in our rental cars so it should have been a relaxed drive. At 5.20 the bus turned up. It was dark and there was no light as we boarded with our luggage. It was an elderly Mazda 23-seater. We needed 7 seats and any other spare aisle space for our luggage. Only when the driver requested some of us get out to jumpstart the bus (dead battery) and the driver said he only had the lights of God to drive by (no headlights) did we suspect things might go wrong. Trying to go any faster than 60 kph caused the gearbox to make terrible noises. After about 150 km the radiator had boiled dry, and the engine was also in urgent need of oil. As the time passed more rapidly than the distance between us and the airport was covered, we realised we wouldn’t reach the airport in time for our booked flight to Johannesburg. At one point the assistant driver (mechanic) was sent ahead (he hailed down a passing car) to arrange a replacement bus in the next larger town on our route, as we crept on.

Even so it took more than an hour after our arrival there, before we were on our way again. The new bus was actually a van and was a lot smaller, with only 14 seats. Somehow all 16 of us squashed in together with camerabags and any luggage which didn’t fit into the trailer. Even so it managed a speed of 100kph, and more downhill. But there was no chance of getting to the airport in time. Thanks to limited mobile phone coverage in each larger town we passed, our tour leader managed to rebook us on the next flight to Johannesburg, which would still enable all our connections to be caught. At the airport one final hurdle was put in our way. The side door of the bus wouldn’t open, so we had to alight through the windows and by climbing over the front seat and using the door of the driver. It made interesting viewing seeing 16 white guys pile out of this little van via the windows, just like the locals do. In the end we all made it to our connecting flights.

 

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