Panel
- Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots – Flickr
Bart shares his experiences chasing steam trains in the run up to Christmas 2025 as an illustration of how adversity can be a learning opportunity if you approach it with the right mindset.
While this podcast is free for you to enjoy, it’s not free for Bart to create. Please consider supporting the show by becoming a patron on Patreon.
Reminder – you can submit questions for future Q & A shows at http://lets-talk.ie/photoq
Notes
Introduction
Every year the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland run a series of Santa Special steam trains over three weekends in late November and early December. I like to make the most of these scarce opportunities to photograph steam locomotives in the wild, and my hope is always to get something nice to use for my New Year's cards. Most years the wether plays ball a few times, and I get some chance for the picture-postcard idyllic shots. But this year the weather really didn't play ball. Almost no sun, no stereotypical winter weather like snow or even frost, mostly, it was just windy, overcast, and often wet.
I did get one chance at a picture-postcard shot, and I was able to get something nice to use for my cards, but my most memorable shots were taken in the worst of the weather. This inclement weather combined with the new possibilities opened up by the iPhone 17 Pro's massively improved telephoto lens proved to be fertile ground for development. I've been shooting trains in general and steam trains in particular for decades, and yet, almost all of my best shots from this season are novel. I learned quite a few lessons, and I think I've found my photographic challenge for 2026.
You can see all my keepers in the series I posted on Glass.
New Lessons Learned
1 — Steam Trains are not Diesel Trains
It sure sounds obvious when you say it, but steam trains are not diesel trains!
Over my many years of shooting along the former Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR) line through Maynooth I've gotten to know it very well. I've discovered my favourite places where I can get the most good shots. The overwhelming majority of trains on this live are diesel railcars, so I've implicitly learned the best places to photograph diesel trains.
Diesel trains can sneak up on your quietly, and when they're running at full speed they can be difficult to capture at the perfect moment for the optimum composition, so the places I get the most successes are actually places where the trains have to slow down for a turn or a signal, so they're often coasting at very low speeds. A diesel train at 100km/h and 0km/h looks the same, so this approach works great!
Steam trains however do not look the same at any speed, or even more importantly, any acceleration. What makes a steam train look like a steam train? Steam! A steam train at regular line speed puts out a decent cloud of steam and it will trail nicely behind the engine over the carriages, but a steam train running at a slower steady speeds puts out less steam, and a steam train coasting puts out no steam! On the other hand, a steam train accelerating puts out the most steam, and even with the regulator wide open and the driver working the engine as full steam it won't accelerate quickly, so it will keep steaming hard for quite some time after it's forced to stop or even slow down a lot.
My favourite diesel spots are at turns or signals where the trains slow or stop, approaching those turns or signals, where they slow down, or just beyond those turns of signals where they're still accelerating, so are not a full speed yet. Two thirds of those locations give you steam trains with little or no steam! On the other hand, there are places the diesels have already made it to full speed and are difficult to photograph that are perfect for steam trains because they're not up to speed yet and still working hard!
Thankfully this penny dropped on the first weekend of the season, so I really got value from my new insight, and almost all my shots from this year have nice clouds of steam!
2 — Telephoto Compression Offers New Opportunities for Foreground Interest
Boring, flat-feeling railway compositions are easy — just stand next to the line and shoot the trains from the classic three-quarter angle so you see some of their front and lots of their side with nothing of interest in the foreground or background and you're done!
Trying to find compositions where a train that is literally running on rails lines up with a good foreground and background to give a compelling composition is the tricky bit!
iPhones before the iPhone 17 Pro offered two high-quality options — standard lens, and a really nice wide angle lens. I've relied heavily on that wide angle lens for compelling compositions in previous years, but this time, I had a third option — the amazing new 4x telephoto.
BTW, in case you're wondering, no, the 8x is not a good fit for railway photography! Why? Because trains move and that lens is so powerful you need a steady hand to get a sharp shot at the best of times, add the potential for motion blur on longer exposures and you're just asking for disappointment!
My new-found realisation that the single best opportunity for trains approaching Maynooth station is the stretch of line just beyond the signal controlling the approach to Maynooth station forced me to experiment with the telephoto lens, and I soon realised I was on to a winner!
Maynooth station is a little unusual because it's the point where the double track line from Dublin becomes the single track line to Sligo. This means that a trains failing to slow down would be extra dangerous, so the approach signal has a special feature — even when the line is clear, it will not turn green until a train has been slowed right down to a near stop. So, every single train approaching Maynooth from Dublin has to accelerate away from that signal before they can coast into the station itself. Perfect, a guaranteed big head of steam!
Unfortunately, while the steam is guaranteed, the view is not. The signal is on a stretch of line that's not visible from the public path, but it is close to a sharp turn in the line, so if you go further down the path there is a short gap in the trees where you can look through the base of the turn and up the straight where the signal is, but the signal is a long way away, too far to make the composition work well without a telephoto lens. Aha, I have one of those at my disposal now!
The fundamental concept of the shat was planned, but serendipity gave me a bonus lesson in the form of a well-timed downpour. As the train approached the heavens opened and suddenly the canal was full of spiky little crowns from the big rain drops. With a wider lens they would have been too small to make a good foreground, but with a telephoto? Perfect!
On the very last train of the season the telephoto worked it's magic again at Pike Bridge. This is a two-arched stone bridge across the canal and the railway, and just beyond it is a small harbour with a stone quay. The canal widens and then narrows again, and if you stand at the very end of the stone quay you get a point-of-view that makes it look like you're in the middle of the canal. Not only can you get a shot with water dominating the centre of the composition and boats framing one side, you can also see through the bridge to see the approaching trains framed in the arch across the canal. Without a telephoto lens this is useful for avoiding the train sneaking up on you, but not much more. This time, with the telephoto I was able to frame the approaching train under the arch and use the barges moored in the harbour to add framing and foreground interest!
Oh, and a little bonus extra fact, diesel trains are up to full speed long before they reach Pike Bridge, but steam trains are still accelerating a little, so the're passing with a nice head of steam!
3 — Many Lenses Multiply Scarce Oporunities
Yes, there are three weekends of steam trains, that's six days, but there are just two round-trips a day, so that's two chances to see the train with the locomotive facing forwards as it heads out to Maynooth, and two to see it pulling the train but facing backwards with it's coal tender in front and chimney trailing. I'll happily shoot engines running tender-first like this, but many purists won't. Still, that means if I find the time to chase the trains every day (not likely), I can get no more than 24 opportunities. That's not a lot!
But I had another epiphany — now that the total usable zoom range has expanded to stretch from the 4x telephoto all the way to the 0.5x wide angle, with enough preparation and practice it's often possible to find two compelling compositions in a single location at different zoom levels. Not always, but sometimes, and you do need to practice the move from one composition to the other — you really don't enough time to faff about!
This worked great for me on a few occasions, helped by the fact that for opperational reasons there is almost always a regular passenger train running five to ten minutes ahead of the steam trains, so you get to practice on a slightly faster train!
However, you can end up biting off more than you can chew, so you do risk losing one or both shots if you mess up.
Lessons Re-enforced
That last observation set the perfect pivot to mentioning two old lessons that were re-enforced for me this year.
Firstly, serendipity, or luck, can always surprise you, and the more you shoot the more opportunities there are for those lucky accidents to make your day!
I mentioned the danger of bitting off more than you can chew when you try to get more than one shot at more than one zoom level from a single pass. It worked great for two compositions, so I got a little too full of myself and planned three, a 4x, a 2x, and a 0.5x, all at Pike Bridge with it's arches and harbour. I'd get the train through canal arch at 4x, then through the railway arch at 2x, then along the harbour at 0.5x. I nailed the first one, technically nailed the second, it just proved boring, and then my finger slipped, and I was too slow for this third. I thought I'd failed utterly, but in the moment I fired the shutter anyway, more our of frustration than expectation, but that's when serendipity struck!
I was too slow for my planned shot — a wide view of the entire harbour with the curve of the quay on the foreground, the barges to the left, the bridge as a nice background, and the steam loco at full steam on the far bank dominating the left middle of the shot with a nice clouded sky above. I figured the train was long enough it would still be passing under the bridge, and just maybe, it's tail might be visible through the canal arch. That was my primary target, the 4x and 2x were supposed to be the bonus extras. But I was too slow for that planned grand finale to the season (did I mention it was the last leg of the last train of the last day?). And yet, I got a great final shot that is indeed a real keeper, how? Turns out, by firing too late I was forced to do a much much tighter crop than I would usually dare, and guess what, it worked great! Very dramatic and compelling!
Less dramatically, the poor weather also reminded me that while the sun makes for more picturesque shots, it also cuts down your options massively. When the sun is shining you need to find spots where at least the front or the near side of the train are sunlit, but when the sky is overcast, you can shoot from any angle, so you literally have twice as many angles available, which opens up a lot more potential locations. 'Bad' weather can be a blessing in disguise 🙂