This morning (31 March 2016), Irish Railway Record Society’s Peter Rigney in cooperation with Irish Rail launched an historical display focused on the role of the railway in the 1916 Easter Rising.
The display is located on platform 1.
The other evening some friends and I traveled from the Dublin city centre to Blackrock on the DART-Dublin’s electrified suburban rail-transit service.
The DART branding mimic’s the Bay Area’s third-rail rapid transit brand ‘BART’ (Bay Area Rapid Transit).
While sometimes my rail travel is focused on the making of photos, this trip had another primary purpose; yet with my Lumix LX7 at the ready, I used every opportunity to make photos.
Significantly, Dublin’s Pearse Station, formerly-known as Westland Row, is credited as the world’s oldest city terminus in continuous use. It was opened in 1834 with the Dublin & Kingstown Railway. Of course, the D&K has the distinction as the world’s earliest operating suburban railway.
Lately the sun has been an elusive orb in Irish skies. Too often, I awake to find a slate gray dome above me.
Good Friday (25 March 2016) was different. It was bright sunny morning.
Having the sun and making use of it are two different things.
In the early afternoon, Colm O’Callaghan, Ciarán Cooney and I waited at Lucan South, just east of the Adamstown Station on the quad-track in suburban Dublin.
Our quarry was the up-IWT Liner from Ballina, which was operating with Irish Rail 233, the last 201 class diesel in the old Enterprise-livery. We caught this engine before, but it’s unlikely to survive for long in this old paint.
While the day remained bright, puffy clouds were rapidly blowing across the sky, changing and dampening the light when they blocked the sun
Anxiously, we watched the signals, and the passing InterCity Railcars. The tapestry above was becoming a maddening mixture of fluff and blue.
Would we get the liner in full sun? After all, that’s what we were out for.
With two cameras around my neck, I was prepared for either eventuality; if it was cloudy, I work with the digital camera; but if the sun came out bright, I’d make a slide. To this aim, I’d set my Canon EOS-3 at f4.5 1/1000th of a second—my full-sun setting for Provia 100F.
It was a photo finish. As the liner approached the light changed from dark to light.
I made some telephoto views with the FujiFilm X-T1; but as the IWT liner reached us the clouds began to part and I exposed a single frame of Fujichrome with my Canon. That photo remains latent in the camera. Did I get it right? It will be some weeks before I know the answer; I wont have the film processed until May.
Ireland has been celebrating the Easter Rising Centenary.
Liberty Hall is an iconic Dublin skyscraper that makes for a interesting prop when juxtaposed with Irish Rail trains on the Loop Line Bridge over the River Liffey.
I explored this scene on 26 March 2016, when a swollen overcast sky made for typical Dublin lighting.
On Easter Sunday, I revisited my locations of the previous day. The sun was out, which changed the look of the setting. Perhaps, I’ll try again with film.
Here are more than a dozen views exposed with my Lumix LX7 on this historic weekend in Dublin.
Tracking the Light posts photographs every day.As part of the Easter Rising Centenary several Dublin post boxes have been temporarily painted red to mark significant locations of this historic Irish event.
Mark Healy suggested this location to me as a place to photograph one of the specially painted post boxes with the LUAS. It is located near the Royal College of Surgeons across from St. Stephens Green.
Tracking the Light is Daily.
On March 23, 1993, I exposed this Kodachrome slide of Santa Fe tracks and code lines at Christie, California.
Not on ‘Tracking the Light’? Click on Brian Solomon’s Tracking the Light for the full image and story.
In the 1980s, I made hundreds of images of upper quadrant three-position semaphores along the old Erie Railroad in New York State, a line then part of the Conrail system.
I focused on this semaphore near Tioga Center, New York in August 1988. This is part of a sequence that portrayed the signal in its three position and this image is of the ‘approach aspect’.
Learn more about American semaphore practice in my book, Classic Railroad Signals published by Voyageur Press.
As a follow up to yesterday’s Extra Post, I thought I’d display this image of a similar signal in the USA.
I made this photograph of three-position upper quadrant semaphores on the old Monon on a warm 2004 summer morning near Romney, Indiana.
Tracking the Light Posts EVERY day!
Every so often, I stumble upon something that flummoxes me.
On St. Patrick’s Day, I was enjoying the evening’s celebrations with some friends at The Full Shilling in Finglas (in north suburban Dublin).
This is a large shop (drinking establishment) with lots of décor characteristic of a Dublin Pub.
On the way to the loo, I looked up and was startled to find a three-position upper quadrant semaphore blade.
‘What’s this? And, what’s it doing here?’
As the author of two books on American signaling, I’m reasonably well versed in semaphore practice. (see: Classic Railroad Signaling; Railroad Signaling. Also see: Barnes & Noble.)
On the surface, it looks a like a standard pattern three-position upper-quadrant semaphore blade, commonly used by many American railways beginning about 1908.
The flat-end red blade with white stripe would have been typically used for an absolute signal that display a full stop in its most restrictive position.
There’s one critical difference with this semaphore blade; it’s a mirror of the signals typically used in the USA.
On most American railways, semaphore blades were oriented to the right, while in British practice (which includes Ireland) they are oriented to the left. (New Haven railroad was an exception).
I would guess that this signal is an adaptation of the American pattern for service in Britain or Ireland. But where did come from? And how did this anomalous signal blade find its way to Finglas, which is not even on a railway line.
At the moment, this stands as one of signaling’s great unsolved mysteries.
Do you know the story behind it?
The deep cutting on the north-side of Dublin’s Phoenix Park Tunnel used to be a difficult place to get a good angle on a train. Previously I’d worked it, but it wasn’t easy. There was only a narrow view and the light was almost always problematic.
Some weeks back, Irish Rail cleared brush and trees from the cutting opening up the view as it hasn’t been for in decades.
Saturday, 19 March 2016, Colm O’Callaghan collected me and we met some friends at a high over bridge to make the most of this new opportunity.
Two trains were expected after Irish Rail lifted a permanent way possession (in North America this would be called ‘maintenance window’, which basically means the line was closed for work).
Take away the trees! Hurrah!
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
This is a cursory survey of new trackage now being installed for Dublin’s Cross City extension of the LUAS Green Line tram route. (The first portion of the Green Line had opened in 2004.)
A couple of weeks ago, Mark Healy and I inspected progress on Dublin’s North Side.
We made a follow up trip last week and these photos were made walking the route along Hawkins Street, College Green, Nassau and Dawson Streets to St. Stephen’s Green (present southern terminus).
I made these photos with my Lumix LX7.
One downside to the completion of the line will be the necessity to string catenary through the Dublin city centre. This will complicate photography of historic architecture.
Of course this same architecture will make for some nice backdrops.
This quiet overhead crossing of the quad-track is just past the 8 ¾ milepost from Dublin’s Heuston Station.
It offers an open view of the line with a favorable angle for down (traveling away from Dublin) trains mid-morning.
It takes a tuned interest in Irish Rail’s operations and a bit of luck. to time a visit to coincide with passage of the weekday IWT Liner (International Warehousing & Transport container train between Dublin and Ballina) and the more elusive HOBS (high output ballast system).
Getting the clouds to cooperate is trickier yet again.
A couple of weeks ago Colm O’Callaghan and I spent a strategic 45 minutes at Stucumny Bridge.
Even if you fail at catching the freight on the move, there’s always a steady parade of passenger trains.
Last Tuesday, I noticed a shaft of sunlight that had illuminated a pair of trains under the shed at Dublin’s Heuston Station.
This Kodachrome slide has always resonated with me.
In North American practice, cabooses and stack trains were equipment from different eras that just barely overlapped.
During the mid-1980s, most class 1 freight carriers banished cabooses to operational backwaters. True, cabooses held out in rare instances (some can still be found), but they had been made redundant by technological changes and their once-standard operation finally came to an end as a side-effect of deregulation.
Another effect of deregulation was a more progressive environment that favored double-stacked container trains.
So, as cabooses were rapidly sidetracked, stack trains were becoming common on principal trunk lines. Since intermodal operations tended to run from terminal to terminal, these trains were among the first to lose cabooses.
I can count the number of caboose-ended double-stack trains I photographed on one hand.
I especially like this view in a snow squall of a Norfolk Southern train carrying an Norfolk & Western caboose on the back of a Maersk stack train that had just come east over the old Nickel Plate route.
The background is the colossal and completely abandoned Buffalo Central Terminal, designed by Fellheimer & Wagner, and constructed by the New York Central during the false optimism of the roaring 1920s, only to open on the eve of the Great Depression.
Buy my book Railway Depots, Stations & terminals published by Voyageur Press to learn more about Fellheimer & Wagner’s stations
(Hint: if you aren’t on Brian’s site, click on Tracking the Light to get the full view!).
The other day I offered a view of Dublin’s Heuston Station lit for St. Patrick’s Day.
A day or so later, I rode by on the top of a double decker bus, and it occurred to me that I’d missed the image.
By showing the station face-on, I inadvertently minimized the effect of the lit Irish Tricolour.
Here, I show the station at a more oblique angle the I feel does a better job of capturing the effect. I’ve included the LUAS but in a marginal role.
What do you think?
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
It was a virtual sea of humanity; and largely decked out in green naff.
I exposed several hundred photos with my Lumix LX7 and FujiFilm X-T1 digital cameras. Below is just a small selection.
Also check out my Dublin Page for more St. Patrick’s Day photos.
My Lumix, always handy, makes a near-perfect tool for capturing the spirit and colour St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin.
Click on my Dublin Page for more photos!
Check out my Dublin Page for more photos!
I’ve posted a variety of new photos on my Dublin Page.
Check it out!
More coming soon!
Last Friday, 11 March 2016, I went up to my favored Irish local location; Islandbridge Junction. This is a handy place for me.
This is great place to catch a freight train exiting Dublin’s Phoenix Park Tunnel on a bright clear day, yet can be visually problematic on a dull day.
On this day, I thought it would be a good place to experiment with a Lee graduated neutral density filter as a means of controlling contrast and allowing for a more effective overall exposure.
The filter I use offers subtle 2/3s of a stop gradation. This is adjustable both up/down and rotationally left/right.
I made a few test photos with and without the filter to gauge my exposure before the IWT arrived with Irish Rail 088 in the lead.
A similar effect can be accomplished digitally, yet the digital effect doesn’t add information to the RAW file, but only makes a visual adjustment in the final image.
In other words to apply the filter digital may be viewed as a ‘correction’ rather than an in-camera technique. Yet, it is often easier to apply a filter in post-processing than in the field.
I’ve used both methods depending on the circumstance.
Below are some results.
This gives a nice overall of my experiment, but in the middle of all this I got a little greedy. Using my zoom lens on the FujiFilm X-T1, I made a tight view of the IWT (with the filter).
As is often the case with last second changes, I didn’t get my exposure quite right. My feeling was that the RAW file was about 1/3 of a stop too dark.
As with most of my photography, I consider this a work in progress. In all likelihood, before long I’ll be back at Islandbridge Junction to further refine my experiment.
It was a day of big excitement. Up north, Guilford was in a knot as result of a strike action. Bob Buck phoned me early in the morning to say that ‘The Boot’ (the colloquial name for Amtrak’s Montrealer) was detouring to Palmer on the Central Vermont, then west on the Boston & Albany (Conrail).
Using my dad’s Rollei model T loaded with Kodak Tri-X, I made the most of the unusual move.
This was nearly a decade before Amtrak’s Vermonter began to regularly make the jog in Palmer from the CV/New England Central route to the B&A mainline.
And, it was only four months before Conrail ended traditional directional double-track operations between Palmer and Springfield.
I’d met some photographers at the Palmer diamond and encouraged them to take advantage of my favorite vantage point at the rock cutting at milepost 84, just over the Quaboag River from the Palmer Station.
As detouring Amtrak number 61 approached with a former Santa Fe CF7 leading the train to Springfield, we could hear an eastward Conrail freight chugging along with new GE C30-7As.
This is among my favorite sequences that show the old double track in action.
Some of these photos later appeared in Passenger Train Journal. Long before I was the Associate Editor of that magazine.
Sunday morning was warm but dull.
Railway Preservation Society Ireland had scheduled a trip to depart Connolly Station Dublin for a run out the Sligo Road to Carrick-on-Shannon and Boyle.
Where to catch it?
There’s a bit of a pull up toward Glasnevin Junction with the stiffest climb as the line passes Croke Park.
At Claude Road a pedestrian bridge over the line offers an excellent view to the east.
On a clear day this isn’t a preferred mid-morning view, because you’d be fighting the sun (to no advantage).
No chance of the sun presenting a problem yesterday morning.
I could hear number 4’s shrill whistle as the engine departed Connolly, followed by more than five minutes of stack talk as the engine worked its consist of Cravens upgrade.
Using my FujiFilm X-T1, I exposed this sequence of digital images as the train worked by me.
I wonder, perhaps I’d have been better off with my old Nikon and 400mm Tokina telephoto to hone in on the working engine? That would be a slide of course. Maybe next time.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
I made this photo a little while ago near Drumcondra in Dublin (just after 11am on 13 March 2016).
Anticipation of the event is half the thrill.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the full story!
It’s become an annual tradition to illuminate notable buildings around Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
I made this image of Heuston Station using my Lumix LX7 mounted on a mini Gitzo tripod.
Heuston is among the stations featured in my book Railway Depots, Stations & Terminals published by Voyageur Press in 2015.
On a bright May morning at Wolsztyn, Poland, I organized a footplate trip for myself on a PKP (Polish National Railways) 2-6-2 running to Poznan with a revenue passenger train.
This was among the photos I made of the experience.
Let’s just say I had a nice view on the return trip.
Tracking the Light Posts Everyday!
Last night, as advertised, I presented my program to the Irish Railway Record Society in Dublin.
I had a large and receptive audience. There were more bodies than seats.
The program was in two parts, divided by a tea break (as per tradition). After a few slides from America, I focused on the main event: Ireland as I saw it 10 years ago.
I apologize: there were no photos of the DART or 29000-series CAF-built railcars, and I probably offered a disproportionate number of views of the last two operational class 121 diesels.
For those curious about my camera equipment: at the time I was in a transition between Nikon and Canon systems, while I was also making good use of a Contax G2 rangefinder. Color slides were exposed with lens ranging from a 16mm Zeiss Hologon to a 400mm Tokina telephoto.
In 2006, I was more than 2 years away from exposing my first digital photo. I was like the Norfolk & Western in 1953, and still firmly committed to the old technology. Most of the slides were exposed using Fujichrome Sensia2 (ISO 100), although I also used some Fujichrome Velvia 100, Provia 100F, and Provia 400F, as well as the occasional roll of Ektachrome.
Thanks to everyone who attended!
Tonight, 10 March 2016, I will present an illustrated program “One Year on Irish Railways; Looking back Ten Years” to the Irish Railway Record Society in Dublin.
What will I show?
I sifted through thousands of my Irish Rail slides looking for images that fit my arbitrary qualification; exposed in Ireland during 2006.
After locating more than 500 slides that fit the bill, I then honed the selection to something manageable.
Ultimately, this meant I needed to reject more photos than I included.
Here are five views that I exposed in 2006, that will not be appearing tonight.
I hope no one will be disappointed.
Tracking the Light posts daily!
Here’s another view from productive day last month photographing Pan Am Railway’s Office Car Special in the snow.
I made this view with my Canon EOS-3 on HP5 at Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.
It is an old school technique to capture a traditional looking train.
Irish Rail’s 071 class diesels are 40-year old work-horse locomotives that are now largely assigned to permanent way and freight trains.
Ten years ago, Irish Rail’s 071s still regular worked passenger services in addition to their other duties. I made a point of photographing the 071s on both main line and branch passenger trains.
Among the features of my presentation to the Irish Railway Record Society this coming Thursday (10 March 2016) will be my vintage images of the 071 at work.
The talk will begin at 7:30 pm at the IRRS Dublin premises near Heuston Station.
Yesterday, Mark Healy brought me on a walking tour of LUAS construction in Dublin’s north inner city.
We started at Marlborough Street and walked to Broadstone and Phibsborough.
I made these documentary views with my Lumix LX7.
When trams begin operation in a year or so, I plan to return for some comparison views.
Among the features of Irish Rail in 2006 were two new paint liveries that had been introduced the year previous.
I preferred the yellow-face scheme on the 201 class diesel. This photographed better than either the older predominantly orange livery, or the new two-tone green and silver (such featured in yesterday’s post).
The brighter ends proved visually especially advantageous in situations such as this one where the front-end was shadowed.
On 10 March 2016, I will present a feature length illustrated talk to the Irish Railway Record Society in Dublin; my topic, Irish Railways in 2006.
This will begin at 7:30 pm at the IRRS Dublin premises near Heuston Station, Dublin.
Today, 6 March 2016, is Mother’s Day in Ireland.
Some weeks ago when I was in Massachusetts, I was helping my mother organize books in our library. Some shelves hold books that have resided there since 1973.
My mother surprised me by saying, “I put these books here thinking that you and your brother would read them. But you never did. I found that very disappointing. They just sat here all these years.”
I looked carefully at the shelf.
‘These books?’
Here was a diverse collection of subjects: philosophy, history, art criticism, architecture, economics, psychology, social affairs, literature, photography and biographies among other topics.
I took one from the shelf and opened it. Inside my name was written in blue ball point.
“I’ve read almost all of these books. See here’s my name.”
I picked up another. “I read this one twice, and I wrote a college paper on this one over here.”
“Really? When did you read them?”
Starting about 1983, whenever I’d go out making photographs, I bring a book with me. If I went to the Berkshires to photograph the Boston & Albany, I always have a book to read while waiting for trains to pass. Up there in the rocks and trees along the West End, I read countless books, including many of the books on that shelf. If I took a long train ride I’d always have a book with me.
“Even now, there’s one of these books on the back seat of the car.” (Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class).
“I have a photo of Sean reading the book on propaganda at the Twin Ledges twenty years ago. And I remember reading all about the Borgia’s one summer’s day in the late 1980s waiting for Conrail.”
“I never knew that!” She said delighted.
Some of the books I’d read so long ago that their words had blended with my own thoughts.
The more I thought about it, the more the discussion about bookshelf astounded me.
Here, I read all these books that had shaped my view of the world and with it my photography and it never occurred to me that my mother had specifically put them there for me to read, nor did she know that I’d read them!
On 10 March 2016, I will present a feature length illustrated talk to the Irish Railway Record Society in Dublin; my topic, Irish Railways in 2006.
This will begin at 7:30 pm at the IRRS Dublin premises near Heuston Station, Dublin.
In keeping with this theme, today’s Tracking the Light looks back at 2006: A year that saw many changes on Irish Rail. Among these was the introduction of the Mark4 push pull sets on the Dublin-Cork run.
I made this view from the canal bridge over the River Barrow of Irish Rail’s viaduct over the same river.
Here a 201-class diesel in the recently introduced green and silver livery (designed to match the new Mark4 sets) leads a train of Mark 2 carriages.
Green 201s and Mark IIs only co-existed for a short time and I was please to make this striking image of this comparatively unusual combination.
Key to my composition is the billowing clouds to the north of the line.
Today, we’d be happy to see a railcar cross Irish Rail’s dormant South Wexford Line.
Back in April 2006, I made this photograph of a mixed pair (class 121/141) with a ballast train at Campile.
Not hard to take in retrospect!
On 10 March 2016 at 7:30 pm, I Will Present to the Irish Railway Record Society in Dublin a feature length illustrated talk on Irish railways as they were ten years ago; the year 2006.
My talk will be at the IRRS Dublin premises near Heuston Station.
See: http://www.irrs.ie
This Kodachrome slide represents a memory of how things were:
Back when Conrail operated the old Boston & Albany.
Back when Boston’s Beacon Park was an active yard.
I passed this location on the Logan Express bus from Framingham the other day. It is much changed
The tracks at CP4 were being re-aligned.
A few years back CSX had come to an arrangement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and agreed to close the yard.
Now at Beacon Park the remaining yard tracks are weed grown and vacant.
Intermodal trains now only run as far east as Worcester where a new, expanded yard was constructed during 2011-2012 to take the place of Beacon Park.
What little carload freight CSX has in Boston is handled by a local freight.
I’d be willing to bet that today more freight moves through the interchange at Palmer than is generated in Boston.
