CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

The Flying Scotsman is probably the world's most famous steam locomotive and this morning it headed south through East Lothian.   Built in 1923 the Flying Scotsman became the first steam locomotive to reach the speed of 100mph in 1934.  The engine was retired from service in 1963 but was used to tour in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia setting a new long distance record for a steam locomotive, covering 423 miles between stops while 'Down Under'.   The Flying Scotsman recently underwent a £4.2million restoration and travelled up the East Coast Mainline at the weekend but as I was working in Italy I was unable to get out to take some pictures. However on my return to Scotland yesterday I found out that the Flying Scotsman was going south today, travelling through Dunbar at 9am.  So I grabbed the camera bag and headed south of Dunbar to capture some images of the mechanical icon. Using the Fujifilm X-Pro2 and XF50-140mm f2.8 I used the new camera's exce...

On Saturday evening the 'Tornado', a steam train that was completed in 2008, travelled through East Lothian as part of its journey up the East Coast Mainline.  I am a fan of anything mechanical from a bygone era, whether it is planes, trains or automobiles, so I headed out to towards Torness Point to find a suitable piece of track where I could get a good shot of the locomotive without the overhead powerlines above the track getting in the way of the shot. Tornado was named in recognition of the RAF Tornado crews that fought in the Gulf War and the locomotive carries the crest of RAF Cottesmore, the station in Rutland I served between 1983 and 1987 and 1990 to 1996. The passing of the 60163 Tornado also presented me with an opportunity to test the new autofocus tracking software on the Fujifilm X-T1. Setting the camera to wide 'Wide/Tracking', 'AF-C' and the drive to 'CH' (8 frames per second) I was able to capture the following sequence of 22 i...