Napa Valley Wine Train Night Photos

As I'm sure you know, one of my favorite kinds of photography is definitely night photography. I made it a point to do as many night photos as I could on the two nights the railroad was running a dinner train. What you're about to see here are photos of a world class train after the sun sets! This type of photography always presents an excellent challenge for me to try to work with whatever available light I have to come up with something really cool! Most of the photos you'll see here were of the "Manual HDR" variety, meaning there was a fair amount of processing done in Adobe Photoshop to get the end result. Now why do I do this? Very simple actually, with a Manual HDR photo, you can create a photo that will look more the way your eyes would see the object at night! I taught myself this technique over the past 4 years doing night photos of Amtrak. I do hope you like what you see here! Enjoy...

A view of The Iron Vineyard at night in the parking lot at the Napa Station.

Getting ready to depart Napa for an evening dinner train.

A view from Soscol Avenue shortly before departure.

A "profile" view of the end of the Cabernet Sauvignon Lounge/Platform car before departure from Napa.

This is just a regular time exposure, but it shows the train going through the crossing at Soscol Avenue shortly after departing Napa Station.

Another time exposure, this time up at the Route 29 crossing in Saint Helena. This almost reminds me of the DeLorean in the
"Back To The Future" movies when it's about to reach 88mph and travel through time!

Back to the Manual HDR images now! Here we are at the Saint Helena Station during the run-around move of the power.

Another view at Saint Helena. Because of the severe lack of ambient light here, I had to do a time exposure of over 2 minutes to get enough "data"
if you will, to use for this image. When I was putting the final image together in Photoshop, I noticed the stars left their little streaks of light in the
sky and the series of dots across the sky were the beacon from a plane that flew through here when I was taking this picture! Somehow, I thought
this all looked kinda cool so I left the dots and streaks of light in the photo!

Sitting in Saint Helena, awaiting departure back to Napa.

Now back at Napa after another excellent run!

One more final view of the train now back at Napa.

Well, once again, this has proven to be an experience I'll never forget! The Wine Train was an experience that you need to see for yourself! Being here in Napa Valley, I've said this before, it's so peaceful and relaxing and riding this beautiful train through here makes a visit here that much more fun and rewarding! I wasn't honestly sure if I was gonna make it back here this year considering the amount of time and costs associated with the rest of this trip but in the end, I figured out a way to get back here again and it was totally worth it! Special thanks goes to the Napa Valley Wine Train's Operations Department and Marketing Departments, you were all a joy to work with on this trip, as well as every member of the train's Staff. You all should be very proud of your train and what you have to offer someone visiting Napa Valley.
I've also said before, I'm not much of a wine drinker, (I'm sure you could probably tell by now my preferred beverage is Diet Pepsi!), but this whole train experience is reason enough to come to Napa even if you don't plan to sample any wine, though if you do, you will sample some of the finest wines on earth!!! While my travel plans for 2015 will not have me here in Napa, I can't wait to come back again someday to ride this train again. I'm very much glad though that I've come here three out of the last four years as I just love being here in wine country! Included below is a link to the official site for the Wine Train, and after that, check out some more great photos taken throughout this incredible cross-country journey...