Photo in Railway Magazine

[whole diary]

[John R]

I'm puzzled by the photo on p53 of the latest issue of two Pendolinos passing. It looks to me as though both trains have white lights showing, which might indicate that the picture has been faked. But then there is a reflection of the yellow front end on the right hand unit side, which would indicate it's more likely to be genuine. (I've also seen the same picture in another magazine recently.)

Would be interested in others' views.

[bobm]

I can see what you mean.  Certainly looks like the white lights are showing on both trains and while the odd error does occur I think it would be pretty unlikely that a northbound service to get that far without platform staff noticing.

[eightf48544]

I've noticed this phenomena in a lot of photos. I've had to look twice to check the train is not running wrong line.

It seems camaras even digital aren't very good at picking up red tail lights especialy in sunlight where the white lights tend to reflect the sun. Although sometime even white lights don't show up.
 I've seen a photo where an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) was running bi-directional coming towards the photograher and it was very difficult to pick out any lights at all, either red or white.

There was a classic of a trian leaving Droitwich taken from the rear where the white lights were prominent. It was only the semphore signal in front which confirmed it as actully going towards Birmingham and on the right line.