With the sun over our left shoulder, we set up in Nequehoning near the new Reading & Northern station to roll by class T-1 4-8-4 2102 on its run to Jim Thorpe.
This is an amazing machine. Seeing it on the move never gets old.
I made this sequence of photos using my Nikon Z-series cameras.
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Sunday evening, we waited out the sunset at Esbenshade Road in Strasburg, Pennsylvania.
Strasburg Rail Road had scheduled a seasonally themed late-departure. I figured this would be an ideal opportunity to make some sunset views of the train.
The orange globe of the sun was nearly at the horizon by the time old 89 worked up the grade toward Paradise Lane.
To make the most of the sky, I exposed this sequence manually rather than relying on the in-camera meter to intrepret what I was tying to preserve digitally. Key to my exposure was the desire to capture the defining shape of the sun and not merely as a fuzzy blob.
I needed to make a variety of changes to the RAW files in post processing, and I think the final results speak of success.
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Saturday was a beautiful clear October morning. I walked up to the station at Port Clinton, Pennsylvania to photograph the arrival of locomotive 2102 from North Reading on its journey to Jim Thorpe.
I felt like a wee plastic man on a really big HO-scale railroad.
Back lit lighting made for dramatic images, but then required a bit of contrast control and selective lightening for final presentation.
I made these photos using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm zoom lens.
After the train arrived to pick up passengers, I walked back to the grade crossing near the village of Port Clinton to photograph the thundering departure of this magnificent machine. Stay tuned!
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Yesterday (October 5, 2024), Kris, Seamus-the-Dog and I drove up to Port Clinton, Pennsylvania to spend a day photographing former Reading Company class T-1 4-8-4 2102 on the Reading Northern.
Waiting for the magnificent iron horse to make its appearance, I was delighted to catch a pair of Reading & Northern former Reading Company Budd RDCs (rail diesel cars) making a run from Pottsville to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
I’m a big fan of the class Budd RDC, so this was a nice bonus for me.
I exposed these digital images using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens. I help compensate for the rich polarize morning sunshine, I’ve made a variety of nominal adjustments to contrast and exposure using Adobe Lightroom.
I also exposed a few 35mm color slides with a Nikon F3. Those remain in the camera, and it might be a while before I have them processed.
(And yes, we achived our objective and spent most of the day making dynamic photos of the 4-8-4 at work).
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Yesterday, I met up with Tracking the Light reader and photographer Andrew Ludasi at Strasburg. We drove to Carpenters to catch the 3pm returning with engine 89.
It was dull afternoon, but the sound of the locomotive in the pastoral setting was rewarding. After the train passed, we discussed cameras, film and photographic technique.
I mentioned that I always liked black & white, and in years past often used black & white film even when I’d had the opportunity to expose color. I suggested that occasionally, I’d convert digital color photos to black & white, and this might be a good idea for today’s photos.
Last night during the processing of my images, I desaturated one of the photos and cropped it to make for a more dramatic composition.
In this image, I didn’t make for a full black & white conversion as I left a hint of color and gave the image a sepia-tint for effect.
Is this better than the full color versions? Today, I can have the best of color and black & white. Take your pick as to which versions you prefer.
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I have a few notes from December 16, 1984. Not as many as I wish I’d taken.
I’d started the morning in Springfield, Massachusetts where I met my friends and we continued north to Greenfield. It was pretty dark when we caught this eastward freight, passing the old Greenfield station site. The Connecticut River Main Line is in the foreground.
It was lightly snowing/sleeting. Pretty bleak conditions for photography.
This was early in the Guilford era, at a time when it was common to find Maine Central and Delaware & Hudson locomotives working Boston & Maine trains. In this instance, Maine Central GP38 262 was leading a former D&H General Electric U23B that had been transferred to Maine Central. At the back of the train was a Delaware & Hudson caboose.
Decades later, while working at Conway Scenic in North Conway, NH. I became familiar with Maine Central GP38s 252 and 255, so I find it fascinating to review these photos that I made 40 years ago of sister locomotive 262.
These are thin negatives exposed on Kodak Tri-X using my Leica 3A with a Canon f1.8 50mm lens. Back then, my understanding of black & white processing was pretty basic, and I used a straight mix of Kodak D76 for the standard time. Live and learn.
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In the summer of 1984, I played with a variety of lenses. I’d dropped my stalwart 50mm Leitz Sumitar , and so tended to prefer either an f1.8 Canon 50mm or my dad’s prized 21mm Leitz Super Angulon.
In August of that year, I was poised at the Palmer Diamond (where Conrail’s Boston Line crossed the Central Vermont Railway in Palmer, Massachusetts) to photograph a westward set of light engines running ‘cab hop’ toward West Springfield Yard.
The sun was partially obscured by a cloud, but the air was crisp.
I made this photo with my Leica 3A rangefinder fitted with the Super Angulon. Among the advantages of this lens was the external viewfinder which allowed for a larger and more precise means of composing photos than the tiny in-camera viewfinder that was designed strictly for a 50mm.
Palmer has changed greatly since 1984. For point of comparison, I’ve included a view of the diamond that I exposed in September 2023.
Conrail single-tracked the Boston Line in July 1986, and the trees have come up obscuring the view that I was once afforded there.
Please activate the time machine and set it to August 1984!
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This past Saturday, I gave a 45 minute talk on the Development and Application of the American Steam Locomotive to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
Among the attendees was SUNY-Buffalo Associate Professor David Alff, who presented later in the evening. His topic was on his most recent publication, the Northeast Corridor. He offered a fascinating social history, not just of the modern day railroad, but of more than two centuries of transportation.
Earlier in the day David and I shared a table signing our respective books and I was telling him of my days watching trains from my grandparents terrace in Co-op City overlooking the Northeast Corridor in The Bronx.(New York City).
Sitting out in front of the museum is Amtrak AEM-7 915, a locomotive that spent roughly 35 years hauling trains on the Northeast Corridor. I have more photos of this classic electric at Strasburg than I do of it under wire.
Over the last few months, I’ve scoured thousands of my own photos, looking for the most representative and evocative images of Amtrak locomotives and trains for my latest book ‘Amtrak Equipment’ (that I’m now in the final stages of completing). In this process, I was frustrated in locating decent images of old 915 at work. (Although, I found a few of its from years ago, and some of those have appeared on Tracking the Light.)
Last night, I was reviewing some black & white negatives from the 1980s that I’d scanned back in 2016, and I found a sequence of telephoto views that I made with my father’s Leica M3 from my grandparents’ terrace.
I had been making photos here since the mid-1970s, but many suffered from inexperience and ineffective technique. By the summer of 1985, I had perfected my black & white photo technique to the point where I finally able to make some satisfying images of trains from this family vantage point.
In the black & white view below of Amtrak 915 crossing the Pelham River, I was using a Leitz Wetzlar f4 135mm Elmar lens, which was a remarkable sharp piece of glass.
Finding this photo was a Eureka! moment.
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Among the remarkable qualities of the Nikon Z cameras is their exceptional exposure latitude.
I don’t set out to make bad photos, but every so often I simply have the camera set incorrectly.
The other day, on our Sunday drive, Kris and I spotted Norfolk Southern’s local freight on the New Holland Branch at Leola, Pa. I pulled over and made a photo using my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm lens set to 175mm. The problem was that I had the ISO set at 1000 and the f-stop set to f2.8.
The camera gave me the fastest shutter speed, 1/8000th, which still left my photo more than a stop over-exposed. Working with Adobe Lightroom, I was able to recover most of the data from the NEF RAW file and present a decent representation of the image, including considerable sky detail.
I also made a series of properly exposed photos, but I’m aiming to demonstrate that even in situations of extreme overexposure, it is possible to adjust the file to present a decent image if your equipment has captured the data in RAW.
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Yesterday morning I paid a visit to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
My principal objective was to perform a dry run of the illustrated program on Steam Locomotive that I will present today to the Museum’s members.
Afterward, I wandered around looking at all my favorite exhibits.
I made these photos using my Lumix LX7.
One of the great things about where we live is that the museum is only about a 15 minute drive from our house.
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On September 26, 2017, I was traveling by tram in Rome.
I made this photo using my first FujiFilm X-T1 fitted with an f2.0 90mm prime lens set at f2.0, 1/250, ISO 400.
Rome is a fascinating city to explore by rail.
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The old Reading & Columbia route of the Reading Company was fragmented during the Conrail-era and what remains is operated by several different railroads.
Historically, the line offered the Reading Company a through-route from greater Reading, Pa., via a junction at Sinking Spring, to Manheim, and Lancaster Junction to the once-important shipping center at Columbia, Pa., with branches to Mt Hope and Lancaster.
Today, the eastern end of this route is operated as part of the East Penn Railroad, with locomotives stored at the old Reading Company station in Reinholds. This continues via Denver and Stevens toward Ephrata.
I began exploring this route after we moved to Lancaster last year. Last week, I made another inspection of this route, making photos of the line using my Lumix LX7. I started at Reinholds and worked my way west.
One of these days, I hope to catch a train on the move over these rails.
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It was a nice day for a drive.
Meandering roads southwest of the Susquehanna brought us to Stewartstown, Pa., home to the historic railroad of the same name.
I made these images of some of the antiques on display at the end of the line. For me, the Pennsylvania Railroad flat car was most interesting to look at, but a challenge to photograph.
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Arriving in our new Honda CR-V Hybrid, we safely pulled off Route 741 at Gap, Pa., to roll by Amtrak Keystone 656 from Harrisburg. This was running just a few minutes after the advertised.
I set up with my Nikon Z6 and 70-200mm lens, aiming to catch the train against the sunset sky. (The sun was just an orange glob slowly melting into the western horizon.)
We received a friendly blast from the engineer in the old Metroliner control cab as the train glided through the curve at Gap.
I like the trailing view with our new car and Kris in the passenger seat. Amtrak 656 is fading into the distance, but we already know what that looks like.
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I walked by this location almost everyday I was in Dublin, but I rarely ever saw this angle. My common spot was around the corner where I could get a clear view over the wall.
On September 20, 2016, I was working with my FujiFilm XT1, which had an extendable, adjustible rear panel display. I had had some help from fellow photographer Jay Monaghan who assisted me to get this angle.
The light was dull and this suited the angle, which would have been partially shadowed had the sun been out.
Belmond’s luxury Grand Hibernian tour train was departing Dublin and I made a sequence as the train passed.
Yesterday, working with Adobe Lightroom, I made a series of post-processing adjustments to the RAF RAW file, including some exposure and contrast adjustment to the AI-masked sky to bring in cloud detail.
I also lightened the shadow areas, while globally increasing contrast and saturation, and corrected the level.
The first photo is the scaled but unmodified image. The second shows the mask in the Adobe Lightroom work window. The last two are my final interpretations, the fourth features addition of a slight vignette.
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In my book North American Railroad Bridges published by Voyageur Press in 2008, I described the double track former Pennsylvania Railroad bridge over the Susquehanna at Havre de Grace, Maryland;
“Between August 10, 1905, and May 22, 1906, PRR built 17 deck truss spans on the piers, ranging from 196 feet 6 inches to 260 feet long, with 24 feet 3 inch clearance above mean water level. To clear large ships, a central swing span was installed. “
Earlier this year, Amtrak broke ground for the replacement of this historic bridge. Last week, Kris, Seamus-the-Dog and I drove to Havre de Grace, where I made a few photos of trains gliding across the bridge. In the distance is construction equipment, which appear to be removing the piers of an earlier railroad bridge in preparation for the new spans.
These views show Amtrak 195 (Boston-Washington) led by ACS-64 634 with Amfleet in tow. Exposed using my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm Z-series zoom.
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On September 17, 2019, my old pal TSH and I were poised at the south portal of the Bett Tunnel near St. Goar, Germany.
When a southward DB InterCity train burst forth from the inky gloom, I exposed a burst of digital images using my FujiFilm XT1.
Unfortunately the front profile of the iconic DB Class 101 electric caught the glint of the midday sun that resulted in over-exposure.
Working with Adobe Lightroom, I was able to reduce and appropriately adjust the exposure on the front of the locomotive while retaining proper exposure for the rest of the scene. I also recropped the photo and corrected for a 1-degree error in level.
Although it was unintentional, as I made this image in the briefest moment, this offers a subtle near- example of a Fibonacci composition, which is represented in the relative separation of key vertical elements.
For this example, I refer to the simple Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5 etc., whereby each succesive number is the sum of the two numbers that precede it. Ironically, it is the imperfect interpretation of the sequence that adds tension to the composition and makes it interesting to revisit.
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We were driving along Rt 222 and started to overtake a stopped freight on Norfolk Southern’s Port Road Branch near Port Deposit, Maryland.
Upon arriving in the village, we turned into a local parking lot adjacent to where the head-end of the train had tied up. This was an opportunity.
In the lead was NS AC44C6M 4334.
Kris and I made a few photos of the train. I like the number of the locomotive, which is a palindrome—a number (or word) that reads the same backwards and forwards.
I made a series of photos with my Nikon Z mirrorless digital cameras. The shadows were a bit harsh, so working with Adobe Lightroom, I lightened them appropriately to make for better (or at least more pleasing) images.
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I don’t remember the exact circumstances behind this photo.
In June 1984, I was at Spring Tower where Conrail’s Boston Line crossed the connecting track between the Boston & Maine Connecticut River Line and Amtrak’s former New Haven Railroad in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The tower was located below I-91, west of Springfield Union Station.
Connecticut DOT’s Budd-built SPV-2000 No.50 was turning on the wye at Springfield. While I don’t recall the reason, I suspect the car had something wrong with the cab at the northward end and needed to turn to make the return trip to New Haven.
CDOT had bought 13 of the SPV-2000s; cars 988-999 carried both Amtrak and CDOT logos and largely worked Springfield-New Haven shuttle services, while a lone car number 50 came with Amtrak stripes but was only lettered CDOT.
I made this photo on black & white film using my Leica IIIA fitted with a Canon screw-mount f1.8 50mm lens. If I made detailed notes on this day, I’ve misplaced them.
So, what makes this a rare photo? C-DOT No. 50 was the only car painted this way (without the Amtrak markings) ; the SPV’s self-propelled days were relatively short-lived; it was unusual to see a single car turning on the wye at Springfield. Have you ever seen another photo of this car crossing the old Boston & Albany at Spring Tower?
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Yesterday evening after work, Kris and I drove to the creamery in Strasburg, then over to Gap, Pa., to roll by Amtrak Keystone 651.
I was hoping to catch a former Metroliner Contral Coach leading in the late sun, but was happy when ACS-64 634 glided around the famous curve.
There’s a lot of dusk and smoke in the atmosphere which cut the light down a couple of stops while softening contrast and warmed the color.
I made this sequence of photos using my mirror-less Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm Nikkor zoom lens.
I made some very minor adjustements to the NEF raw files in postprocessing.
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It was a bright day in suburban Dublin on this day ten years ago when I made this telephoto view of Irish Rail 215 in fresh paint leading the Up IWT Liner (Ballina to Dublin’s North Wall) on the quad track at Lucan South.
My camera of choice that day was a Canon EOS-7D with a prime 100mm lens.
I’ve included two versions of the photo; one is the in-camera color profile, the other is adjusted from the Canon RAW file using Adobe Lightroom to improve color balance, increase color saturation and lighten the shadows.
Special thanks to Colm O’Callaghan for his assistance with my photography on that day.
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Over the last few days, I had been experiencing some technical difficulties posting Tracking the Light. I received numerous alerts from readers, and wasn’t even able to view the site myself at one point. Thanks to readers who sent me suggestions on how to fix the problem and some nuts and bolts help from my father Richard J. Solomon, the site should be up an running again. Thanks to everyone who wrote to me! I consider this a test. Fingers crossed.
In the process of getting things moving, I’ve selected a new ‘Theme’. This alters the way Tracking the Light appears. This is by intent. Let’s see how it goes.
Since this is a Sunday, I thought I’d post a vintage Sunday photo.
On Sunday, December 29, 1985, I spent the day photographing trains on Conrail’s former Boston & Albany main line.
At West Brookfield, Massachusetts, I made this view of the Sunday-schedule Charter Oak rolling west behind Amtrak F40PH 216.
This train tended to have a longer consist on Sundays. This Sunday, I’m working hard to complete my latest book, which takes a look at Amtrak through its locomotives and rolling stock. It covers everything from GG1 electrics to the latest diesels from Siemens-Mobility.
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As a follow up to yesterday’s post, I am presenting a sequence of photos at the same location that I made in March of 1986.
Amtrak had detoured its Montrealer via Palmer as a knock-on effect of a strike on the Boston & Maine. This was a full decade before Amtrak’s Vermonter used a similar routing.
In these photos, Train 61 the southward Montrealer was being towed by a CF7 from Palmer to Springfield, Massachusetts, having arrived in Palmer on the Central Vermont. There was no direct curve from the CV route to Conrail’s Boston Line to allow for a direct north to west move.
I had been showing some visiting photographers around Palmer, and we had set up a the rock cut at milepost 84, a short distance west of the Palmer diamond.
As the Montrealer was heading west on Track one, we could hear the chugging of six-motor GE C30-7As leading the eastward TV6. As it happened the two trains passed in front of us.
In yesterday’s post, I’d mentioned that a few months later, Conrail removed the westward track (Track 1) as part of its single tracking of the Boston Line. And that’s what makes this sequence so special.
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July 20, 1986 was the last full day of traditional directional double track operations (rule 251) on Conrail’s Boston Line between Palmer (future CP83) and Springfield (future CP92).
Using my father’s Rolleiflex Model T, I made this photo of Amtrak F40PH 201 leading an Inland Corridor train east at milepost 84 (in the town of Monson, Massachusetts). The next day, Conrail crews cut in the new crossovers which took the old westward track at this location out of service. It was ripped up some months later.
In 2011, I scanned this 645 size black & white negative. Unfortunately, I forgot to reverse the scan and so it remained as a negative image.
There is probably some ‘one-click’ means reversing the scan into a positive image using Lightroom. I had no luck finding that trick, so Kris and I ‘Googled’ how to accomplish this simple task.
Basically, you open the ‘three bars’ control at top left, expand the ‘light’ controls and scroll down to the ‘D log H’ curve (it’s the graph that plot the exposure curve), and reverse the orientation of the line graph so that it goes from bottom left to top right (rather than the other way around.)
This created a positive, from which I made my corrections, albeit in reverse.
I’ve included the work windows.
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During late summer and early autumn the evening light changes quickly.
Compare these views of Amtrak 651 at Christiana.
The first was exposed on August 14th, the second was yesterday evening (Sept 4).
There are other differences too. The top photo was made with my Nikon Z7-II, the bottom is a product of my Lumix LX7.
Having just composed a summary of the Metroliner for my Amtrak book, I’m feeling nostalgic about these old cars (one leads as a ‘cab car’ in the bottom photo) which are now some of the oldest in revenue service on Amtrak.
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Nine years ago, my Irish friends and I were exploring railway operations in Germany’s scenic Mosel Valley.
I made this view from the wall in a vineyard of a DB freight heading northward (eastward) toward Koblenz.
While not as busy as the Rhein Valley, there are endless perspectives on the railway in the Mosel Valley and we were certainly entertained by a continuous parade of freight and passenger trains.
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Nine years ago, my Irish friends and I were exploring railway operations in Germany’s scenic Mosel Valley.
I made this view from the wall in a vineyard of a DB freight heading northward (eastward) toward Koblenz.
While not as busy as the Rhein Valley, there are endless perspectives on the railway in the Mosel Valley and we were certainly entertained by a continuous parade of freight and passenger trains.
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On the afternoon of September 3, 2013, I stood atop the castle wall in Oberwesel, Germany, gazing across the Rhein toward the railway line on the right bank (east bank). I made this photo of a northward SBB Cargo freight about to enter a tunnel using my old Canon EOS 7D with a 28-135mm zoom set at its maximum focal length.
Oberwesel offers stunning views of the electrified double track lines on both sides of the river, where a continous parade of trains makes for one of the greatest train watching locations in Europe.
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Sometimes a descriptive file name isn’t very helpful.
I made this photo on a visit to the coal fields west of Köln, Germany on September 2, 2013.
The metadata reads: Canon EOS7D, EF28-135mm, 75mm, f7.1 1/500 ISO 200.
The branches make the picture.
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Sometimes a descriptive file name isn’t very helpful.
I made this photo on a visit to the coal fields west of Köln, Germany on September 2, 2013.
The metadata reads: Canon EOS7D, EF28-135mm, 75mm, f7.1 1/500 ISO 200.
The branches make the picture.
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Eleven years ago, I made this side shot of a passing DB Class 146 electric at Buir, Germany near Köln.
To freeze the action, I exposed it at a 1/1000th of a second using my Canon EOS-7D.
In post processing, I made a variety of adjustments to color balance, contrast and saturation.
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On this day in 2016, I photographed Irish Rail’s ‘Sperry Train’ departing Dublin’s Heuston Station from my favorite location at ‘the Box’ at Islandbridge Junction—a short walk from my old apartment.
This was exposed using my FujiFilm XT1 mirrorless camera with a Fujinon 18-135mm lens. I had the JPG set to the ‘Vivid’ color profile.
This is a scaled view of the in-camera JPG, without changes to color, contrast, or exposure.
Irish Rail’s 075 was one of the last locomotives painted in the short-lived ‘freight livery’—black and silver with safety yellow fronts.
At the bottom is the Lightroom work window that shows all of the camera data.
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The Dublin & Kingstown was among the oldest railways in the world. This opened between its name sake points in 1834 and is considered the first steam railway in Ireland. The route is now part of Irish Rail’s network and was electrified in the early 1980s for the DART suburban service.
On August 30, 2016, I’d traveled from Dublin to Blackrock on the DART electrified suburban service to meet my friends. Working with my Fuji XT-1, I made this trailing photo from the footbridge on the south side of the station of a northward 29000-series CAF diesel railcar.
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On our visit to Philadelphia earlier this month, I made this view looking down on Amtrak’s former Pennsylvania Railroad from the Cira Green urban park.
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I’ve been searching my archives for Amtrak photos to include in my latest book project. This is among interesting photos in my selection of out-takes.
Former Amtrak E60CH 973—still wearing Amtrak colors—leads NJ Transit North Jersey Coast train on the morning of July 11, 1986. At right; an eastward Conrail freight on the former Lehigh Valley waits to enter Oak Island yard.
Exposed on Kodak 120 Tri-x using my father’s Rolleiflex Model T with a ‘Super Slide’ 645-formet insert. Film processed in Kodak D76.
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Nice evening light at Strasburg gave me an opportunity to test the camera on my new iPhone 13.
I needed a new phone for a variety of reasons. I think there were about four technology museum’s bidding on my old phone!
Anyway, I made a pair similar photos of a favorite EMD switcher at the Strasburg Rail Road that has been undergoing a restoration for a number of years.
The first photo (and enlarged headlight) were made with the iPhone. The second photo (and enlarged headlight) were exposed using my Lumix LX7 in RAW format.
In both instances I attempted to capture the most amount of data as possible with each imaging system.
Both photos display a variety of artifacts. Neither is perfect.
More comparison is necessary before I draw any firm conclusions, however I’ll keep my Lumix, but I won’t heistate to make grab photos with the iPhone either. In practice, my Nikon Z cameras will continue to be the busiest picture making machines that I own.
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