Aerial Train Chasing

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I have many interests. Ham radio, amateur astronomy, model railroading and "train chasing". That is where you go out with video and still cameras and catch moments when trains roll past or actually pace them from a near-by roadway.

Legally, what are the liabilities?

I don't want to get in trouble with the authorities or the railroads, I just think it would be pretty neat to get a different perspective.

Any thoughts?
 
I don't know Fred. Think how you would feel if you knocked one off the tracks !

The only thing I know about trains, is you can't shoot them. A couple kids in High School thought a 22 surely could not hurt a big old train.

And as I recall it really didn't. But it shore got a lot of grownups involved.

I can't imagine any peril your little drone could cause. But all I have to go is common sense, which seems to be falling out of favor these days.
 
I imagine the standard rules apply. Don't fly over people, launch from public ground, no risky moves near the train... Everyone runs the risk of paranoid busybodies calling the police whenever they see a drone in the air, but you can't help that.

73!
 
My concern is someone objecting to "photographing infrastructure". That's a pretty broad brush.

I think that would be serious overreach by the government. Trains are photogenic Americana. I was going to take aerial video of an active locomotive last month, but just couldn't match up my schedule with that of the train.
 
Trains? Woo-Hoo!

Right now I'm scouting out a good location to launch and some different angles to catch the train that runs through this drawbridge several times a week. Right now the problem is that it runs through about 7pm IN THE DARK. Arrrrrgh.

However, in late February and March there should be enough light at that time to get a great running video heading up into and crossing that bridge.

It's kind of isolated and the run out there for the P4 will be in the 3000-4000 foot range for the entire shot, which is why I'm scouting it out now.

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Here's my train chase:)

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Like the video.
Were you flying manually?
Guessing that it was planned but it looks from the video that you were super close to the wooden lamppost/telegraph pole at 00:14 and the power lines at 00:21. Did you zoom in during post or was it actually that close?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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All manually. No zoom.

Ya I got a lil lucky, but I kind of measured the first pole and made sure to stay above that height. The second pole snuck up on me!

Did any of you guys spot me?
 
Haha man I love it. And yep... Really close to the trees and poles... But what a video [emoji16][emoji16][emoji16]

Neon Euc
 
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Nice Video, you might be interested to know that BNSF advertised for an intern position who has a private pilots license and some drone experience for a program they were starting up. About a year ago. Never did follow up.
 
Caught a train last night and didn't even realize. Bad video, I wasn't really shooting video, just flying around. 1080 because no 4K editing software yet. It's hard to see the train LOL

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