Why make photographs in the same places of the same trains over the course of days, months, years?

This pair of images shows one reason. So often, even the same train at the same place looks different every time you photograph it.

Both of the photos below were made of Irish Rail’s V250 (laden sugarbeet train that ran from Wellingtonbridge Co. Wexford to Mallow, Co. Cork.) The photos were made within a few feet of one another in late 2005; these were exposed a few weeks apart, in the final weeks of Irish Rail’s final sugarbeet campaign.

Although both were made at approximately the same time of day, the lighting was completely different. In one the lighting was dull, in the other, the light dramatic because the sun was emerging from layers of cloud. In both photos, a mixed pair of Class 121/141 diesels were running around their train—a move necessary because of the lack a direct curve that would have allowed a direct move from Waterford to Cork.

The dull-light photo offers greater historical perspective. Beyond locomotive 134 is one of Irish Rail’s new InterCity ‘Mark IV’ passenger trains. While the sugarbeet concluded in January 2006, the MarkIV trains wouldn’t enter revenue service until May of that year.

I traveled on the first revenue Mark IV from Dublin to Cork. A few years later, I was a member of the group that worked with Irish Rail to preserve 134. This locomotive is representative of the General Motors end cab diesels bought by CIE in 1961, which were the first EMD’s in Ireland, and among the earliest EMD’s exported to Europe directly from LaGrange, Illinois. (Early, but not the first).

So which is the more memorable photo? Interestingly, both are from my ‘seconds’, since neither image was deemed ‘first cut’ at the time of processing. There’s at least one lesson in that fact.

For both photos, the stories I can’t tell will make for interesting history in the future.

Tracking the Light Examines Photography Daily!