Thanks for the kind comments - always appreciated!

As for the question from "the unknown author", I believe
he meant to ask how many shots I took before I got it.

If so, I took 8 and that image was #7. Now, that not
because I screwed up the first 6, rather, in preparation
for catching the perfect pan, and due to the affordability
of shooting digital, I start shooting early on and use the
momentum to eventually catch up. So, it's the last few
shots that I am going for where I will be parallel to the
subject. FPS for a Canon 40D is 6.5.

Hmm... where's my Men in Black device now? LOL.

Steven - not sure I follow your words.

Obviously, I saved a few bucks on film and developing.
Maybe you meant capturing an image is NOT any easier
with digital and technically, I would agree. We are
just substituting a sensor for film and all other things
should be equal aside from the processing which can be
done equally with a good scanner and slide /negative.
With film, I would assume the settings and ISO could be
set identically - I probably upped the ISO last minute to
160 to get just a hair more brightness as 160 is not a
standard setting nor one I use often! An ND filter was
required.

No tripod - I find unless it's a ball head set loosely,
the swing is just too restrictive to the relative motion
of the train.

/Mitch