Class 37 hauled sleeper train heading south at Corrour at night.''
Doesn't look like much. A photograph of a 37 taken with a camera using a flash.
Wrong.
This is a photograph of a 37 taken with a generator and a bank of studio flashes ... and a guessed shutter speed.
It was around the time of the discussions about withdrawing the Fort William sleeper. I had a passion for O. Winston Link style photographs and had been taking photographs of the sleeper every friday night for a two years at various random spots up and down the length of the West Highland Line.
To take this photograph we drove up to Rannoch. We arrived there just as the afternoon northbound Sprinter did. It was early and it took two dashes from the car-park to the station manhandling boxes, rucsacks and a generator to get everything on board. An extremely kind guard held back the train while this vast amount was loaded into the train. And so off we set for Corrour.
A short ride spent getting odd looks from fellow travellers, we waited by the door.
At Corrour we dragged everything back off the train. The generator was stashed in the doorway of ''Morgan's Den'' and we set off into the moor to setup tents for the night. On our return the generator had vanished ... a little wind-up for us and a story to the effect that a couple of lads had set off across the moor with it. And then a smile. ''I put it away for safe keeping'' or words to that effect. He was a character. We whiled away the hours until the sleeper came talking of bothies and clearing bothies and further the removal of needles from bothies and finally the now abandoned farm at the south end of Loch Treig and a large pile of fenceposts some gits had set fire to.
With an hour to go we set-up the generator and lights carefully beyond the fence at the south end and west side of the station. There was still that strong blue light in the sky you get after the sun goes down. I crossed my fingers it would last. It did, but you wouldn't know from the version of the photograph here on the website. We connected the cables up, setup a tripod and waited.
Of course you can hear a 37 some distance off round here growing louder and quieter, applying power and taking it away. We started the generator. Flashes start whining as they charge. Finally a headlight appeared. Some quick calculations about balancing available light (must have dark blue sky, must have dark blue sky), flash light, speed of film, shutter speed, iris (tricky ... this isn't exactly a studio). The locomotive pulls into the station, the driver (and more particularly his eyes) disappear from view as it pulls in above us and ... flash. The generator slows to almost a stall and recovers.
We relocate the lights and take another, just in case. I needn't have bothered. The first was the one as I found out a week later ... after development. There is a blue sky and the exposure is about spot on. Jammy.
So after a night on the moor, we returned to Rannoch. On the return journey my brakes failed but that's another story.
Copies of the photographs went to Tom-na-Faire and Polmadie, as a sort of ''thank you''. I wonder where they are now?
These are probably the most extreme lengths I've ever gone to for a photograph.