June 2013
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SEPTA One Year Ago: June 29, 2012
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This day last year (June 29, 2012), Pat Yough, my brother Sean and I, spent the evening photographing the final runs of SEPTA’s 50 year old Silverliner IIs and IIIs. These were working the short run on the former Pennsylvania…
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CSX at East Brookfield, Massachusetts, June 26, 2013
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Ballast Train at Work On the evening of June 26, 2013, I arrived at East Brookfield to find Dennis LeBeau observing CSX’s undercutting operations immediately east of CP64. Over the last few years, CSX has been improving its former…
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Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited, West Brookfield, Massachusetts
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Playing with a Pentax. A few weeks back, I traveled to West Brookfield to meet with my friend Dennis LeBeau—East Brookfield’s musical godfather and preeminent historian. Dennis had organized for me an informal tour of the former Boston & Albany…
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On the Road with Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited
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Brian’s Trip on 448 Last week I rode from Chicago Union Station over the former New York Central Water Level route to Albany and then via the Boston & Albany to Worcester, Massachusetts. A familiar run, I first made…
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Indian Summer for the Irish Rail Class 121‑Part 3
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General Motors Single Cab Diesels Wander Far and Wide in their Final Years. In their final few years of service, Irish Rail 124 and 134 worked a great variety of services. For me, simple knowing these two engines were…
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Indian Summer for the Irish Rail Class 121‑Part 2
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General Motors Single Cab Diesels on the Beet. During sugar beet season Irish Rail was tight for motive power, as the six to seven extra laden trains per day, plus returning empties, tended to tax the railway’s small…
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Indian Summer for the Irish Rail Class 121s—Part 1
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General Motors Single Cab Diesels My favorite Irish Rail diesels were the Class 121s. This single cab General Motors type was derived from the standard American switcher, as typified by the various NW and SW models. However, unlike switchers…
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MRSI Excursion at Ferrycarrig, County Wexford.
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Irish Rail 080 leads preserved Mark II carriages. At noon on May 13, 2006, David Hegarty and I photographed this Modern Railway Society Ireland special exiting the tunnel at Ferrycarrig, County Wexford on the old Dublin & South Eastern…
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Amtrak’s Springfield—New Haven Shuttle at Berlin, Connecticut
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Two Years Ago Today, June 20, 2011. Exactly two years ago, I delivered my brother Sean to the Amtrak station in Berlin, Connecticut. He was on his way back to Philadelphia after a brief visit to Massachusetts. Amtrak’s…
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Wisconsin & Southern at Lake Monona, June 18, 2013
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In the last final minutes of the day’s sunlight. John Gruber and I went over to Madison’s Lake Monona anticipating Wisconsin & Southern’s (WSOR) road freight heading to Janesville. I’m working against a deadline, so I brought the laptop with…
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Wisconsin & Southern on the old Milwaukee Road at Sun Prairie
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Here the Atlantics Once Rolled. Dick Gruber did the driving, John offered historical context, while I made notes. We all made photos. I was working with three cameras; my EOS-3 film camera loaded with Provia 100F slide film, my…
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DeForest Station, June 14, 2013.
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Brian Solomon’s Tracking the Light post new material daily! Canadian Pacific’s former Milwaukee Road M&P Branch. Dick Gruber, John Gruber and I, explored some former Milwaukee Road lines near Madison, Wisconsin on June 14, 2013. “You hear a lot about…
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Rondout Tower, Illinois, June 12, 2013
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Visions of Milwaukee Road Hiawatha It’s impossible for me to visit Rondout Tower and not see the ghost of a streamlined F7 Hudson blasting by with the Hiawatha in tow. Ghosts only; I’m not nearly old enough to have…
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Chicago by Night
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An Exercise In Using High ISO. Chicago is well suited for night photographs. On the evening of June 11, 2013, Chris Guss and I took advantage of warm and windless weather to make a variety of railway images in the…
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Interstate Interstate Chase.
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In Pursuit of a Norfolk Southern GE Diesel dressed in Heritage Paint. On the evening of Tuesday, June 2013, Chris Guss and I were exploring the convergence of railroad lines in northern Indiana. Here myriad routes aiming for Chicago…
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Chicago Medley, June 2013
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Infrastructural Views Fresh From the Digital Cameras. The other day, I landed at Midway where I was met by Chris Guss. We immediately set to work making images of America’s most railroad intensive city. It’s been nearly two…
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Rail Freight, Stockholm, May 7, 2010.
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Green Cargo Rc2 Electric Leads a Container Train at Alvjso. I was in Stockholm in Early May 2010 to visit a friend. I made some time to re-explore the railways, as it had been a dozen years since…
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Irish Rail April 2000, Sligo Line at Hill of Down
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073 Leads the Afternoon Down Sligo Passenger I made this pair of images of the daily afternoon Dublin Connolly to Sligo passenger train passing the long closed station at Hill of Down on the old Midland Great Western Railway…
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Pelham Bay Park Part 2, January 1984.
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A View From Grandma’s Terrace. In yesterday’s post, I explained that my grandparents had a Coop City apartment in The Bronx. It was on the 19th floor of a 1970s-era tower block located at the periphery of New York…
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Pelham Bay Park, December 1982.
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Amtrak AEM7 Crosses The Hutchinson River in The Bronx Between 1973 and 1985, my paternal grandparents lived at Co-op City in The Bronx, New York City. They had a great view of Amtrak’s former New Haven Railroad line from…
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South Station, Summer 1978.
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How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Other kids would get assignments along the lines of: “Write a 500 word essay on how you spent your summer vacation.” I always wished for something like that. In 7th grade this…
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Kid with a Camera, Framingham, Massachusetts, 1982.
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Lacking Skill but Enthusiastic In1982, I was visiting my friend Dan Howard in Needham, Massachusetts. We’d made a day of riding bicycles to Framingham and back to photograph trains. (Neither of us were old enough to hold a valid…
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Croatian Railways Passenger Train West of Zagreb, August 16, 2003
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Listening to the Sounds of a General Motors 645 diesel in Run 8. On the afternoon of August 16, 2003, I was in suburban Zagreb making photos on Croatian Railways (Hrvatske Zeljeznice—properly spelled with a hooked accent over the…
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Snapshot of Croatian Railways (Hrvatske Zeljeznice)
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A View From the Train to Belgrade, 2003. On August 17, 2003, I traveled by train from Zagreb, Croatia to Belgrade, Serbia. This was a six-hour journey. While the train departed on time, it took a diversionary route around Zagreb…
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Palmer, Massachusetts, ‘CP83’ on Friday evening, May 31, 2013.
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The “C” Light is Lit. Going back to at least the 1980s, a group of us would convene in Palmer on Friday evenings. It used to be that after closing Tucker’s Hobbies on Fridays, Bob Buck would come down…
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Ayer, Massachusetts, Wednesday May 29, 2013
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Three views of Norfolk Southern General Electric Dash-9s. Often I look to put trains in their environment by trying to find angles that show context. Not every railway scene is scenic. And, in the North East, more often than…
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Amtrak’s Southwest Chief east of Las Vegas, New Mexico, September 1998
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General Electric Genesis Diesels and Style T Semaphores. Railways can offer tremendous technological contrasts. Among my photographic themes is juxtaposition of the oldest technology along side the most modern. When I made this image, there was roughly 60…