At the End of the Day; Twilight at Mechanicville, New York.

Here’s a photo from my lost archive.

I’d spent November 24, 1984 with some friends exploring railroads in the Albany area.

Delaware & Hudson had recently been included in the Guilford network and its operations were being melded with Boston & Maine. At the time, D&H still had a lot of old Alco diesels.

We had stopped by Mechanicville earlier in the day, and I made a selection of photos (that I’ll post at a later date) then we drove via Schenectady to Rotterdam Junction to photograph Conrail.

On the way back east, we made another visit to Mechanicville, when I exposed this twilight view. This is an evocative image that represents a symbolic twilight as well as a literal one.

Exposed with a Leica 3A on Kodak Tri-X, processed in Kodak D76 1-1.

It was twilight for the D&H Alcos; twilight for the old Mechanicville Yard; and twilight of the brief colorful and busy era on Guilford before a series of strikes changed everything.

Tracking the Light Posts Every Day.

3 comments on “At the End of the Day; Twilight at Mechanicville, New York.

  1. Anonymous on said:

    Any color pictures of the colorful era? ( not that there is anything wrong with Black and white)

  2. Michael Walsh on said:

    That’s a very nice picture. One could argue about framing and shadows etc., but it certainly captures the feeling of decline and fall.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

* Copy This Password *

* Type Or Paste Password Here *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>