It was a warm April afternoon in 1978 when my father and I arrived at Jersey Avenue to make photos.
For me this was a thrill. The long tangent in both directions seemed to reach to the horizon, and the trains passed at tremendous speed.
It was also one of my earliest experiences working with a long telephoto lens.
Pop had fitted his 200mm Leitz Telyt with Visoflex to my Leica 3A.
The Visoflex provided me with an equivalent to an SLR (single lens reflex) arrangement for a rangefinder camera by using a mirror with prism to see through the lens.
Where I was well used to the peculiarities of Leica’s pre-war rangefinder arrangement, using the Visoflex offered a new set of challenges, especially in regards to focusing.
Fast forward to December 2016. Pat Yough and I were exploring locations on Amtrak’s North East Corridor. I suggested Jersey Avenue because I was curious to see if that was where Pop and I had made those photos so many years ago. (Back in 1978, my photo notes were a bit thin).
Indeed it was. So we made a few photos from approximately the same spot before investigating other locations. Compare my December 2016 views with my much earlier attempts.
By coincidence, last night I was looking at photos of Seaboard Airline passenger cars. In your lead photo today, you are showing (2nd car from the left) a Seaboard Pullman-built, 5 double bedroom-bar-lounge-sun roof car; Seaboard owned just three of them. Over each of the five over-size windows there were matching windows in the roof. It was the closest the railroad could get to a dome car because of restrictions in the Baltimore tunnel. It’s a really dynamic photo!
Those 1978 shots are wonderful. So much history – so much changed. But the location is still good.