photography

25 years Ago at Limerick Junction

I made my first trip to Ireland in February 1998.

After landing at Farranfore, I spent a week in Tralee, then another driving around the West in a hired Citroen Saxo, before enbarking on a rail journey at Limerick for Dublin.

This was argueably the most significant train trip of my adult life. I never intended to visit Dublin. But upon arrival there, I realized that I’d found a special place.

All of Dublin lay in my future. For more than 20 years, I rented apartments in Dublin. And the city was my conceptual office and research library where I wrote many of my books and as used base to travel around Europe.

Between 1998 and 2019, I made tens of thousands of photographs documenting Irish railways.

I made this view of the Limerick – Limerick Junction shuttle with 121-class number 128 while waiting for the Up Cork that would whisk me toward Dublin (although, I actually disembarked at Kildare to change to a local train consisting 2600 railcars). Exposed on Fujichrome with a Nikon F3T using a non-AI f2.8 135mm Nikkor telephoto.

Tracking the Light Looks Back!