I exposed this photo from the back of Silver Splendor as it rolled eastward on Amtrak no48, the Lake Shore Limited.
For this photo I used my Lumix LX7, and by using a slow shutter speed I allowed the tracks to melt into a sea of motion blur.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy’s famous Zephyr is one of the most significant trains of the 20thCentury.
In November, I photographed the preserved Zephyr at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, where the historic train set is proudly display in the lobby.
It was great to see the Zephyr in person again. Last time I saw the train back in the 1990s, it was undergoing a thorough cosmetic restoration in Wisconsin.
I’ve written extensively about the Zephyr, describe the train’s context, history and technology.
You can buy my book from Amazon see:
https://www.amazon.com/Streamliners-Locomotives-Trains-Speed-Style/dp/0760347476
Today, Friday December 7, 2018, Trains Magazine released Episode 11 of my podcast Converstions with Brian Solomon.
Bob Bentley of Massachusetts Central is my featured guest in an interview conducted at the Palmer Public Library in Palmer Massachusetts.
See Trains at:
http://trn.trains.com/photos-videos/2018/09/conversations-with-brian-solomon
Or listen to the podcast on Sound Cloud:
https://soundcloud.com/user-312824194/conversations-with-brian-solomon-episode-11
Looking south on North Wells Street at Hubbard, I made this view of Chicago Transit Authority ‘L’ train using my FujiFilm XT1 with 90mm Fujinon lens.
In recent months, Chicago Metra has been painting its older EMD diesels in a modern livery.
My first experience seeing these old engines in new dress was approaching Chicago Union Station on Amtrak number 4.
I made these views ‘on the fly’ from the dutch door of former Burlington Vista Dome Silver Splendor(nee Silver Buckle) that was rolling over old home rails on the last lap of the run from Los Angeles.
I worked with my FujiFilm XT1 fitted with a 18-135mm zoom lens, which gave me necessary compositional flexibly as the scenes rapidly changed.
Rolling east on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, I made a variety of photos of BNSF freights from the train as we crossed Missouri on the way from Kansas City to Chicago.
Here we have one view from a Superliner, one from the dutch door of Silver Splendor and one from that car’s panoramic dome.
Tracking the Light Posts Every Day!
I’d never experienced Kansas City by rail before.
This was just a brief visit, a mere layover while Amtrak no4Southwest Chiefchanged crews and dropped off and collected passengers.
I made photos of the car I’d been traveling in: former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Budd Vista-Dome Silver Splendor (nee: Silver Buckle).
I like the contrast between the 1956-build streamlined dome and the nearly new Siemens Charger diesel-electric.
The modern streetcar was a surprise. I’d forgotten that Kansas City had recently re-adopted this classic form of transport.
Soon we were rolling east toward Chicago!
Yesterday I received my author’s advance copy of Jan 2019 TRAINS Magazine.
This is the first issue of the new redesigned Trains.
This is an excellent issue and I hope everyone has a chance to enjoy it.
I dedicated my column to my friend John Gruber who passed away in October.
It’s a sad irony that John was with me at Kalmbach Media the day my new portrait was taken for the magazine’s redesign.
It was 30 years ago today that I exposed this Kodachrome 25 slide at the east-end of Buffalo’s Frontier Yard.
In this view, there are two westward freights on the former New York Central Water Level Route.
I was fond of Conrail’s six-motor General Electric diesels, and C36-7 6620 caught my eye.
My notes from the day have gone missing, which is unusual and annoying, because I’ve generally made a habit of keeping detailed note from each trip over the years.
However, I recall that I was traveling with Doug Eisele and Pete Swanson and that we made a tour of Buffalo area freight operations. I exposed this view using my Leica M2 with a 90mm Elmarit.
The day began bright and clear, but by midday clouds had rolled in from Lake Erie.
Tracking the Light Posts Every Day, sometime twice!
Two weeks ago Amtrak’s Southwest Chief greeted a frosty sunrise at BNSF’s sprawling Argentine Yards, west of Kansas City.
I made these digital photographs from the dome and vestibule of Silver Splendor,the former CB&Q Vista-Dome in which I was traveling cross-country.
A rosy sunrise tints my perspective; it sure made this famous yard look like a neat place.
These days the only regular trains to use the old Santa Fe Raton Pass crossing are Amtrak 3 and 4, the Southwest Chief. The days of helpers over the three percent are all but a memory.
This day two weeks ago: Arriving on No.4, we had more than ten minutes at Raton to stretch our legs and take in the mountain air.
I used the opportunity to make some twilight images of Silver Splendor, the Budd-built Vista-Dome that I was traveling on.
Working with my FujiFilm XT1 and Zeiss 12mm Touit lens, I exposed several views in the blue glow of evening. Dusk is a great time to balance the light inside the passenger car with outside illumination.
Between Albuquerque and Raton Pass (on the New Mexico-Colorado state line) I counted three bastions of Union Switch & Signal style-T2 upper quadrant semaphores on our journey over the former Santa Fe in Vista-Dome Silver Splendor.
I watched the blades drop from the vertical as we passed—a scene I’d not witnessed for many years.
In 2018, these signals represent the last large collections of active semaphores on any North American mainline.
The Style T2 was detailed in my book Classic Railroad Signals in a sidebar titled ‘Sante Fe Semaphores Survive in New Mexico’ by John Ryan and the late John Gruber.
Classic Railroad Signals was published by Voyageur Press in 2015. It is available at:
https://www.quartoknows.com/books/9780760346921/Classic-Railroad-Signals.html?direct=1
Yesterday, 30 November 2018, I located a collection of my Irish Rail slides from 2005. Among them were these views of ‘bubble cement’ trains (consisting of pressurized four-wheel powdered cement wagons) passing Islandbridge in Dublin on 26thof May that year.
These were exposed on Fujichrome Sensia II (100 ISO) and processed at Photocare on Abbey Street in Dublin.
I scanned these using an Epson V750Pro flatbed scanner making large TIF files, then made colour and contrast adjustments using Lightroom to improve presentation. In addition, I also implemented some digital sharpening to make the photos prior to outputting as scaled JPGs (for Internet presentation) to make these appear closer to modern digital images.
Irish Rail stopped operating cement through Dublin about a decade ago, and so these views are now historic.
