On a trip to the Ukraine in 2007, fellow photographer Denis McCabe and I spent several days around L’viv—the old Austrian city of Lemberg.
Working with Fujichrome I exposed this view of a tram on very ropey looking street trackage.
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I thought I’d take a diversion with today’s post and review a few photos that I’ve made recently of covered bridges in Northern New England.
This region is famous for its antique wooden trusses. These images just a small sample of the photos I’ve made of bridges in recent weeks.
Although none of these spans carry railway tracks, at one time there were a number of railroad covered bridges in the region, including the Saco River span on Boston & Maine’s Conway Branch in North Conway. That bridge was replaced about 1949 with a steel plate girder span.
Fellow photographer, Kris Sabbatino and I have been exploring the highways and byways of the region with curious old bridges high on the list of items to image for posterity.
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The old Groveton (New Hampshire) station building stands where the former Boston & Maine met the old Grand Trunk. Today the GT route is operated by Genesee & Wyoming’s St Lawrence & Atlantic (known by its reporting marks SLR) while the B&M line is the very lightly used New Hampshire Central route to Hazens, Whitefield and beyond toward Littleton.
On visits here in the 1990s, I’d found the now defunct New Hampshire & Vermont switching the old paper mill at Groveton. But the mill is now a memory. The once imposing structures dwarfed the little brick station building.
I made these digital photos on a recent visit with photographer Kris Sabbatino. All were exposed using a FujiFilm XT1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit and adjusted for shadows/contrast in post processing with Lightroom.
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DB (German Railways) class 185 electrics are members of Bombradier’s TRAXX Family of locomotives.
These are a common type for freight service.
Last September, I made this view of a Class 185 leading a southward tank train rolling along the Rhein near Lorch at Im Bachergrund using my FujiFilm XT1.
Autumn sun was softened by thin high clouds that made for almost ideal lighting.
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Sometimes electrical wires are placed in inconvenient positions.
In this photograph from a highway overpass near Port Cartier, Quebec, road-side electrical cables resulted in an unfortunate visual obstruction to what would otherwise be an ideal vantage point looking toward the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.
I made this image on my photography adventure to the Cartier Railway with George Pitarys and Bill Linley in July 1997.
A loaded iron ore train was headed from the mines toward the port for trans-loading on to ships. Low evening light accentuated the hues of the water in the distance. The distant searchlights and ship on the water provide added interest.
Although imperfect, I exposed the slide anyway.
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This is my office.
On April 15, 2020, I made photos as I arrived and as I departed to show the light at the respective times of day.
In my recent article on the Conway Scenic Railroad in May 2020 TRAINS Magazine, I discussed the railroad’s North Conway station in detail, but didn’t picture the iconic structure.
This will be rectified in an upcoming issue, but I thought I’d present these recent photos on Tracking the Light.
I’ve always focused on my immediate surroundings, photographing the ordinary, the common as well as the unusual and the extraordinary.
Over time, the common scenes often have the best staying power.
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Last night, I was inspecting scans of some black & white negatives from last summer that are stored on my hard drive.
These are some photos from a Sunday morning in early August at North Conway, New Hampshire of locomotive 7470.
All of these are from a roll of Fuji Acros 100, exposed with a Nikon F3 with 50mm lens and processed with split-bath/multi-stage development using a weak bath of HC110 followed by Rodinal for primary development.
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On October 12, 1992, my father and I traveled on the Pittsburgh Light Rail, traversing both the 47 Shannon and Drake Shuttle routes where vintage PCC cars still roamed. Both lines are now defunct. Later in the day, my brother Sean and I revisited these lines by road to make a few more photos.
On that trip, I exposed this Kodachrome slide with my Nikon F3T fitted with a 35mm perspective control lens.
While I was aiming to fill the frame with the rarely photographed PCC car, in retrospect I wished that I’d allowed a little more space around the streetcar.
I’m happy to have made this photo, since it was my only photographic adventure with the Pittsburgh PCCs.
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It was a dreary wintery morning in January 2009, when I exposed this view of PCC-derived Tatras meeting on the streets of Olomouc, Czech Republic.
I was traveling with photographers Tim Doherty and Denis McCabe on a whirlwind post-Christmas tour of central Europe that began and ended in Prague.
I was working with Fujichrome color slide film using a Canon EOS-3 with a 100mm f2.0 lens
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Over the last few weeks, I’ve been closely involved with the filming of training videos at the Conway Scenic Railroad.
This ‘still’ shot was exposed last week. And today we are continuing with the filming process. Of course there’s no actual film, as we use video that is stored digitally on cards and then downloaded to a computer for editing.
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In February 1999, I made a day trip from Brussels to Antwerp, Belgium.
While in Antwerp, I took the number 2 tram to its terminus at Hoboken.
You mean there’s another Hoboken Terminal? In a manner of speaking, yes. But no copper clad Bush train sheds at this one.
When I saw this PCC departing for central Antwerp, I was amused by the National Car Rental advertisement at the back of the car. That same day I expose a view of a similar tram advertising ‘Diesel’ apparel.
Exposed on Fujichrome Sensia II (100 ISO) with an Nikon N90S probably fitted with a 80-200 Nikon zoom.
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All was quiet last Sunday when we passed through the once busy railroad hub at St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Vermont Rail System services the former Canadian Pacific (née Boston & Maine) north-south line, but there was no sign of activity during our brief visit. However, on my previous trip to the town, I rolled by the southward VRS freight, and featured this further down the line in a series of Tracking the Light posts. See:
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-admin/post.php?post=28635&action=edit
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-admin/post.php?post=28651&action=edit
Fellow photographer Kris Sabbatino and I focused on the large railway station building that is a centerpiece of the town, then went to explore the nearby former Maine Central truss over the Passumpsic River that represents the far west end of the old Mountain Division—the railroad line utilized by Conway Scenic Railroad over Crawford Notch.
I’d photographed this bridge many years ago, but wanted to re-explore it, as it now has greater relevance for me.
The light was flat, and although dull, this seemed appropriate for the circumstances. In additional to these digital photos, I also exposed some black & white film that I intend to process at a later date.
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The other day, Adam Bartley and I were discussing railway operations and locomotives in Canada, which reminded me of an epic trip I took with George Pitarys and Bill Linley back in 1997.
We drove to Port Cartier, Quebec, a port on the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, and spent several days photographing the isolated Cartier Railway, which moved exceptionally heavy iron ore trains using vintage six-motor Alco and MLW diesels.
Tracks traversed a Canadian National park and this was as close to true wilderness as I’d been up to that time. Other than the railroad and a dirt road that ran parallel, there was virtually no other human activity. No houses, no towns, no restaurants, stores, or anything.
This view of a southward loaded train was exposed on Kodachrome 25 at milepost 21 (as measured from the port). At the time I was using a Nikon N90S with an f2.8 80-200mm Nikon zoom lens.
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Over the years, I’d photographed most of the railroad bridges over the Connecticut River. And in most situations I’d pictured the bridges with a train (or at least an engine on them.)
There are a few bridges I’d missed over the years. One was this former Maine Central span on the former Mountain Division west of Whitefield, New Hampshire near Gilman, Vermont.
Last week, photographer Kris Sabbatino and I, took the opportunity to picture this three-truss span.
No train on this bridge for us. My guess is that the last rail-move across the bridge was in the mid-1990s.
Photos exposed using my FujiFilm X-T1 and Lumix LX7.
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My April 3rd, 2020 post featured a Kodachrome slide that I’d exposed at Whitefield, New Hampshire back in October 1992.
At the time I made that image, Whitefield was on the periphery of my photographic territory. I was visiting New England from California where I’d been living for more than three years. I arrived at Whitefield to inspect the famous ball signal, and I was fortunate to catch the New Hampshire & Vermont working with an Alco RS-11.
I never thought that I might be based in New Hampshire in 28 years time and that Whitefield would be in easy reach.
Looking back, I find it fascinating to locate these old chromes and revisit the locations today. It’s a pity that there is much less activity on some lines now. So while the tracks remain at Whitefield, there is virtually no traffic and train movements are exceptionally rare.
Last week photographer Kris Sabbatino and I paused at Whitefield so that I could make a ‘now’ view at the same spot as my 1992 photo. Using my iPhone to access Tracking the Light, I brought up my April 3rd posting and used that to help re-establish my earlier vantage point. The tracks remain in place, although it doesn’t appear that anything has used them in recent times and the crossing protection has been removed.
However, except for the ill-fated Alco RS-11, most of the remaining elements of the scene are still in place.
My friend Dan Howard researched the RS-11 and reported, ‘it went to the Lake State Railway where it became their 1195 and was subsequently scrapped.’
I used my Lumix LX7 to approximate the angle of the 1992 slide, which was exposed with my old Leica M2 with 50mm Summicron.
I’ll need to try this again, since the lighting was flat in my contemporary view, and my positioning was only about 98 percent correct.
Complicating this comparison is that my notes from the day are in Monson, Mass., which has me guessing on some details.
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Last year I traveled by this bridge on various occasions, and photographed it from the front of a locomotive, and I’ve been wanting to make satisfactory images of it from the ground
Recently fellow photographer Kris Sabbatino and I stopped by the oldl truss bridge for a closer look.
This is located on the portion of the former Maine Central Mountain Division owned by the State of New Hampshire and operated by the Conway Scenic Railroad.
Notice the unusual mix of lattice-type and solid steel cross members.
These photographs were made using my FujiFilm XT1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit.
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Here are two views made at the tram terminal in Schaerbeek/Schaarbeek in Brussels. The top was exposed on Fujichrome with my Nikon N90S in 1999, the bottom using a Lumix LX7 in April 2017.
The building in the background is the old SNCB railway station house, now part of the Train World railway museum complex.
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Just now I was searching for another photo, and I came across this scan from a 35mm black & white negative that I exposed in June 1989.
This was on a routine trip to East Deerfield. It was a foggy morning, as mists clung to the Connecticut River Valley and over Boston & Maine’s sprawling yards behind me.
I was standing at the famous ‘Railfans Bridge’ where countless thousands of photos were exposed over the years (and that’s just my personal collection, not to mention all the photos made by countless other photographers).
I was working with my father’s M3 fitted with a 90mm Leitz telephoto.
At the time, a long-hood forward SD45 at this common location probably didn’t rate my A-list. Yet any SD45 on the move would have warranted my attention.
Look at the old B&M phone box to the left of the locomotives.
When I revue my old photos, I am routinely surprised how the common has become cool.
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Yesterday, I described how my SD card disintegrated and how I was able to ultimately retrieve the photos stored on the card.
Below are some of the photos from the card that may have been lost forever.
These represent the more or less routine scenes around Conway Scenic Railroad during last week while we were filming videos for crew training purposes.
The railroad has had to postpone its April reopening because of restrictions imposed to help contain the on-going pandemic. So railroad’s core-staff are using down-time to prepare for re-opening when conditions allow for it.
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My Lumix LX7 gets a lot of use. I carry it with me everywhere. Last week while filming training videos at Conway Scenic, I’d been using it to make still photos. However, on Wednesday when I went to download the card to my Macbook, the unexpected occurred.
I removed the card from the Lumix and went to insert it into my card reader. When I did this the plastic split and crumbled and the card broke into several pieces!
This was a first for me!
I tried to reassemble the card and get it back into the card reader, but this didn’t work well enough to allow my computer to read the data stored on the card.
Then I thought I’d try something a bit riskier. I closely examined the remaining pieces of the card (several bits and crumbs had fallen away, including a number of the dividers on the contact portion of the card), and I returned the card to the Lumix. My concern was that I might not be able to get the pieces out again.
I have a cord that allows me to connect the Lumix directly to the MAC. Locating the cord was part of the challenge, and I was hoping this wasn’t among accessories I may have left in Dublin. However after a thorough search, I located the elusive cord and plugged the Lumix in.
To my delight, I was able to check the card on the camera and ultimately successfully download all of the images stored on the defective card.
The lessons from this disaster:
1) SD Cards are fragile.
2) You can retrieve the data from a broken card even when the plastic disintegrates.
3) It helps to have more than one means of retrieving data from your SD card.
4) Using a cord to directly download the card to the computer puts less stress on this ephemeral media storage system.
5) Always back up your SD Cards and download them often.
6) Always carry spare SD cards.
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Sun and clouds made for dramatic lighting near Fabyan, New Hampshire last weekend. Photographer Kris Sabbatino and I had been circumnavigating the mountain.
In these views of the Mount Washington Hotel, its famous namesake peak looms in the sunshine beyond.
This obviates the description: ‘in the shadow of Mount Washington’.
I’d hoped for a shaft of sun to illuminate the famous early 20th Century hotel, but the fading light wasn’t cooperating. Maybe next time . . .
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This week Conway Scenic Railroad has fired up former Maine Central GP7 573 to appear in filming for crew-training videos.
While most of my work involved operating the video camera. I made a few still photos too.
These were exposed yesterday using my FujiFilm XT1.
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Working with a Calumet 4x5in camera, I exposed this single frame of black & white film (probably Kodak Tri-X) at the Genesee & Wyoming shops in Retsof, New York on February 10, 1988.
The old RS-1 was stored out of service at the time in its bicentennial paint.
I tray processed the film in a diluted solution of Kodak D76.
Several years ago I scanned this image and dozens of other 4×5 black & white photos using an Epson V750 scanner.
This image, while scaled, represents the unadjusted 4×5 scan.
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In the late 1990s, Seattle-based tour operator Great Train Escapes employed me to provide on-board contextual narration to their guests during their autumn rail-based New England excursions.
Part of the journey were trips over the St. Lawrence & Atlantic former Grand Trunk line in Maine and New Hampshire.
On several occasions we boarded the train eastbound at Gorham, where I took the opportunity to expose Fujichrome color slides.
Last week I revisited the old Grand Trunk station and environs at Gorham with fellow photographer Kris Sabbatino, where we met Andrew Dale who reminded me of my earlier visits to the town. This inspired me to dig into the archives to find these vintage photos.
The modern images were expose using my FujiFilm XT1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit, while the vintage photos were made with a Nikon.
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On 6 April 2015, I took Irish Rail’s DART service to Bray, and then I hiked around Bray Head.
On my return, I paused to photograph this DART electric train on its southward run toward Graystones using my Lumix LX7.
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The Ponte Dom Luis 1 is one of two magnificent Eiffel bridges spanning the Douro in Porto, Portugal.
On this day (April 5th), 2014, I worked with my Canon EOS 7D to make this photograph of a Eurotram crossing the bridge.
Porto is a remarkable and extraordinarily picturesque city.
Fellow photographer Denis McCabe and I were exploring Porto during a week-long photographic journey around Portugal. While the weather was good in the south of the country, it was foggy, raining and overcast in the north.
Portugal is among the countries prominently features in my book; Brian Solomon’s Railway Guide to Europe by Kalmbach Books see:
https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/search?q=brian+solomon+Railway+guide+to+Europe
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The Hungarian capital has a wonderfully complex transit system mixing heavy railways, with metro lines, funicular railways, urban street trams, and interurban trams.
On a visit in July 2007, I exposed this Fujichrome of a route 49 tram passing below a MAV (Hungarian state railways) arched bridge.
It was extraordinarily warm that day.
This was one of the last rolls I exposed using my Contax G2 rangefinder. Not long after returning to Dublin, the camera developed a serious fault and I stopped using it.
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It seems like another age when I drove to Whitefield, New Hampshire on spec to photograph the famous ball signal in October 1992. As a bonus, I caught this New Hampshire & Vermont Alco RS-11 working the yard.
In this view the RS11 crosses Union Street-Route 3 on the former Boston & Maine line to Wells River via Littleton.
I exposed this Kodachrome 25 slide using my Leica M2 with a 50mm Summicron.
The ball signal still stands at Whitefield, but the tracks are almost never used. I wonder what happened to this RS-11?
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This was a common scene in the mid-1980s; Central Vermont’s southward road freight with a large collection of GP9s crossing the Palmer diamond.
What I find remarkable looking at this image is how few trees were around the tracks back then as compared with today.
At the bottom is a view of the New England Central at the same location a few weeks ago.
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Conrail began operations on April 1, 1976.
On May 14, 1985, I photographed this Conrail GP10 with a former Pennsylvania Railroad caboose working as a local freight toward its interchanged with Pioneer Valley Railroad at Westfield, Massachusetts.
The location is just west of milepost 107 in Westfield. At the right is my father’s 1978 Ford Grenada, which was the car I drove a lot before getting my own set of wheels in 1986.
At the time of this photograph, Conrail rarely assigned GP10s to its New England Division locals, which makes this a relatively unusual photo in my collection.
My new book Conrail and its Predecessors published by Kalmbach Books will be available soon!
https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/product/book/01309
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