Caption: The early days of a hobby. I'm 17, have a G2 license and access to my parents 1999 Honda Civic and their basic point and shoot camera, a Canon Powershot A75. What turned out to be a Friday ritual (parents permision or not!), on my spare period at Centre Wellington District H.S. in Fergus, take the camera and Civic down to Guelph to catch the afternoon activity, normally focusing on OSR and hopefully catching a late GEXR 580 depart Guelph or catching GEXR 431 returning from Mac Yard to Stratford.
One of my first experiences I caught OSR returning through downtown from the interchange (with GEXR), with RS18u 181 and RS23 506. They had some work at Polymer Distribution Inc. (PDI) yard before they departed for Guelph Jct at Campbellville, Ont. I made my way south to the wooden trestle over the Eramosa River and waited over an hour for them to finish their work. In my mind at the time, it was a thing of beauty. The sun peaking out of the clouds making the colour of the maroon and beige engine standing out against the grey November sky, and the engineer throttling up showcasing the trademark MLW "smoke show". 8 years later it is still one of my favourite photo's, however the unsightly twigs around the nose make me cringe everytime I look back on this image...