Last Saturday evening, on our visit to Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, Kris and I photographed the arrival of Cape Cod Central’s Polar Express Christmas train behind a New Haven Railroad painted FL9 diesel-electric/electric.
Historically, the railway lines serving Cape Cod were part of New Haven Railroad’s Old Colony Division and so NHRR’s famous dual mode FL9 locomotives seem right at home at Buzzards Bay.
Kris has many friends at Cape Cod Central and we were welcomed at Buzzards Bay by the railroad’s Kaylene Andrews Jableki who faciliated our photography.
Working with my Nikon Z6, I made this sequence of photos of the FL9 leading the Polar Express into the station using existing light. My camera was set to ISO 8000, which allowed for a shutter speed of 1/200th of a second at f4.0.
On the evening of Easter Sunday 1988, I visited the old Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh station and yard at East Salamanca, New York.
CSXT was still a relatively new railroad, and this southward freight from Buffalo featured former Baltimore & Ohio GP40/GP40-2s painted for CSXT component Chessie System but with CSXT sublettering.
CSXT was in the process of spinning off it’s former BR&P trunk to Genesee & Wyoming start up Buffalo & Pittsburgh. I was anticipating the change, but the sale was still several months away.
I made a series of Kodachrome 25 slides of the train changing crews at dusk using my Leica M2 with 50mm Summicron firmly mounted on a tripod. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the exposure and my slides are about one stop too dark. This one was made at f4 at ¼ second.
Part of my problem was that my Sekonic Studio Deluxe lightmeter wasn’t accurate in low light. Another issue was that I didn’t compensate for reprocity failure, which was a characteristic of Kodachrome films in low light.
April 3, 1988. Kodachrome 25 exposed for 1/4 second at f4 with Leica M2 and f2.0 50mm lens.
I scanned this K25 slide with a Nikon LS-5000 scanner using VueScan software which enabled a multiple pass scan to maximize data capture of highlights and shadows. I imported the high-res (4000 dpi) scan into Lightroom and adjusted the file to compensate for underexposure.
Kris and I went to see the Cape Cod Central on Satuday evening. The railroad had decked out the former New Haven Railroad station and signal tower with an elaborate display of Christmas lights for their Polar Express excursions.
Working with my Nikon Z6 set at high ISO, I exposed this series of handheld night photos.
24mm; f4, 1/50th of a sec. Photo scaled from in-camera JPG33mm, f5, 1/50th of a sec. Photo converted from NEF camera RAW.
I made photographs of Amtrak at Meriden, Connecticut on two occasions.
The first was in February 1979. My father brought my brother and me out for the afternoon and we stopped at Meriden’s Amtrak station to watch the arrival of a New Haven-Springfield shuttle operating with a pair of Budd RDC’s. I exposed these coming and going Kodachrome photos with my old Leica 3A. (previously featured on Tracking the Light in 2015. See: http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/2015/05/14/amtrak-rdcs-at-meriden-connecticut-february-1979/)
My second visit was on January 2, 1988, when I stopped at a grade crossing just north of the station to catch a southward holiday extra that was running with F40PH 205 and borrowed MARC passenger cars.
Last night, I was able to place the location 1988 photo by carefully scrutinizing the older slides. The distinctive profiles of the buildings to the left of F40PH 205 also appear in the distance of the trailing view of the RDCs, which is how I know that the 1988 photo shows the train approaching Amtrak’s Meriden station stop.
If you look carefully at the 1988 photo, you can see the conductor standing in a vestibule door. The platforms were at the east side of the tracks for trains in both directions, as evident in the first view of the RDC at the station.
During a visit to Cape Cod the other day, Kris and I made photographs at Corn Hill Beach in Truro, Massachusetts.
Using my Nikon Z6 with f2.8 70-200mm Nikkor Z-series zoom, I made a series of the surf. To ‘freeze’ the water I used a very fast shutter speed (typically 1/8000th of a second) while back lighting the bay and using shalow focus for a diorama effect.
Below are six examples of the water frozen in time.
Five years ago, I made this photo of the northward Housatonic Railroad freight crossing a side road near Stockbridge, Massachusetts using my Lumix LX7.
On November 28, 2017, Housatonic Railroad GP35 3601 crosses a road near Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
In summer 2018, I paid a visit to West Barnstable, Massachusetts where there were several antique railcars on display. The photos I made of a decayed former Delaware & Hudson caboose garnered interest.
Yesterday, Kris and I revisited West Barnstable. It was raining and dark. I made a few photos of the station, Mass-Coastal track and the old D&H caboose. It’s condition hasn’t improved over the last four and half years.
This wooden bodied relic of former times makes for a fascinating study in decay that seems symbolic of the fading status of the D&H itself.
I featured this style of D&H caboose in a book on cabooses that I authored with John Gruber in 2000.
West Barnstable, Massachusetts. Exposed using a Nikon Z6 digital camera with a Nikkor Z-series f2.8 70-200mm zoom.West Barnstable, Massachusetts. Exposed using a Nikon Z6 digital camera with a Nikkor Z-series f2.8 70-200mm zoom.West Barnstable, Massachusetts. Exposed using a Nikon Z6 digital camera with a Nikkor Z-series f2.8 70-200mm zoom.West Barnstable, Massachusetts. Exposed using a Nikon Z6 digital camera with a Nikkor Z-series f2.8 70-200mm zoom.West Barnstable, Massachusetts. Exposed using a Nikon Z6 digital camera with a Nikkor Z-series f2.8 70-200mm zoom.
The other day I was going through a carton of slide boxes from the mid-1990s. I found a roll from a day out with photographer Mike Gardner to capture New England Central in Connecticut.
On Halloween day 1997, we followed southward freight 608 to New London, photographed a few Amtrak trains on the Shore Line, then followed 608 on its northward return trip to Palmer, Massachusetts.
At South Windham, Connecticut, I made a view on the old Fuji Provia 100 (RDP) using my first Nikon N90S with f2.8 80-200mm Nikon zoom lens.
The soft afternoon sun resulted in a somewhat under exposed slide that never made my final cut, and so remained in the green Fuji box for more than 25 years.
I scanned it with a Nikon LS-5000 slide scanner powered by VueScan 9.7.95 (recently updated from the earlier version of VueScan that I’d been using for a few years), and then imported the high-res TIF file (scanned at 4000 dpi in ‘Fine’ mode) into Adobe Lightroom for adjustment and scaling.
Below are JPGs from the unaltered scan and from my adjusted scan to improve the overall visual appeal of the time. Adjustments included warming the color temperature, adjusting sky denisty, lightening the overall exposure, and contrast control.
I’ve also included a photo of Mike, who is a regular Tracking the Light reader.
Scan of my Fujichrome Provia 100 slide without adjustments. The slide is darker and cooler than I’d like, but captures the train in late autumn foliage.This is the same scan following myriad adjustements to improve the appearance of the image.Adobe Lightroom work window showing the relative positions of slider controls that implemented adjustments to my original scan.Mike Gardner catches the action on Halloween day 1997.
On the morning of 23 November 2004 a thin mist covered the ground near Ballycullane, County Wexford. A laden Irish Rail sugarbeet freight had just passed and I could still hear the drumming of the Class 071 diesel at it worked Taylorstown Bank.
I made this trailing view of Irish Rail’s per way gang using a Nikon F3 with Nikkor f2.8 180mm lens. The camera was loaded with Fujichrome Sensia II (100 ISO slide film). Note the lamps at the back of the freight.
On November 20, 2018, I visited Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry with Dave & Rhonda Swirk. Among the exhibits we viewed was the famous Burlington Zephyr of 1934.
This was significant for me because we were in the process of bringing former Burlington Budd Vista Dome Silver Splendor (originally Silver Buckle) from Los Angeles to North Conway, NH. We had traveled on the car from Los Angeles on Amtrak No.4, the Southwest Chief, and were laying over while the car was switched onto train 48 the Lake Shore Limited .
The 1934 Zephyr was the direct ancestor of this car.
Today, the Budd Vista dome works for the Conway Scenic in New Hampshire and is named Rhonda Lee after Rhonda Swirk—following in the railroad’s car naming tradition.
A month ago—LUAS on Provia—18 Oct 2022—I made these photos of LUAS trams working the Green Line in the Dublin City Centre using a Nikon F3 with Provia 100F (RDPIII) color slide film.
During our trip to Ireland I exposed 7 rolls of film along with hundreds of digital photos. This is just a sampling of a few photos from our last day in Dublin.
Last night, I scanned the slides using a Nikon LS 5000 (Super Coolscan5000) slide scanner powered by VueScan software and then imported the scanner’s hi-res TIF files into Adobe Lightroom for minor color and exposure corrections.
I find that film offers a different quality of image, which is part of the attraction. But, I also find that working with my old Nikon F3s produces different compositions than I get when making photos digitally. So despite the inconvenience of carrying both film and digital cameras and the comparatively high cost of exposing color film, I continue to work with both film and digital media.
Fuji Provia 100F slide exposed using a Nikon F3 with f2.5 105mm telephoto lens.Fuji Provia 100F slide exposed using a Nikon F3 with f2.5 105mm telephoto lens.Fuji Provia 100F slide exposed using a Nikon F3 with f2.8 24mm wideangle lens.
Yesterday, I received back 14 rolls of color slides spanning six months of photography.
Among these were photos I made of our Wedding Special, operated on September 17, 2022 courtesy of Conway Scenic Railroad on the Conway Branch using RDC Millie. I was the engineer that day and at several locations I spotted the train for photos.
It was a perfect day. I made several Fujichrome Provia 100F slides to preserve the event.
Both of these slides were exposed using a Nikon F3 with 50mm Nikkor lens and scanned with a Nikon LS5000 slide scanner powered by VueScan software. The film was processed by AgX Lab in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
Of the thousands of trains I’ve photographed over the years, none could compare to this one. Many of our friends and family joined us on the run to Conway. Kris and I were married the next day—September 18th (two months ago).
In mid-October, I traveled the length of the old Dublin and Kingstown route to meet with my friends in Dun Laoghaire.
The Dublin and Kingstown Railway was opened in 1834 between Westland Row (today Pearse Station) and the harbour in Kingstown (now called Dun Laoghaire).
It was the first railway in Ireland and often claimed as the world’s first suburban railway.
Today, this route is operated as a portion of Irish Rail’s Dublin Area Rapid Transit electric service and hosts InterCity services to/from Rosslare Europort.
I had excellent autumn sun for my spin to Dun Laoghaire and stopped off at a couple of stations to make photos using my Nikon Z6 digital camera.
Approaching Seapoint.Seapoint station stop.DART interior.Dun Laoghaire .Dun Laoghaire .
It was a glorious clear September day when Denis Mc Cabe and I paid a brief visit to Ceske Budejovice on a rail trip around the Czech Republic in 2008.
We changed trains at the main railway station. I spent a couple of hours photographing the historic city, which is famous for its architecture and beer.
At the time I was entertaining a publisher with the idea of writing a book on the cities of the Hapsburg Empire. Although the book never came to pass, I accumulated hundreds of photos of cities from Innsbruck, Austria to Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
I made these photos on Fujichrome using a Canon EOS 3.
In mid-October, I was on my way over to Connolly Station, when I noticed the Ad-wrapped Sky LUAS tram gliding west on the Red Line near the Loop Line Bridge.
Working with my Lumix LX7, I made this view as the tram passed below the bridge.
The unusually decorated tram looked good in the rich morning sun.
It was Irish Rail’s final sugarbeet season, although no one knew it at the time.
We set up at Charleville Junction on the Dublin-Cork line on the Cork-side of Limerick Junction to catch V250, a laden train led by locomotive 081.
I made this view on Fujichrome. It sat in a closet in Dublin for nearly 15 years and I only recently retrieved it from storage.
Last night I scanned the slide using a Nikon LS-5000 slide scanner and then adjusted the hi-res TIF file using Adobe Lightroom to correct color temperature and color balance while making minor contrast and exposure corrections.
Below is the file before adjustment and after. In both images presented here, I scaled the files as JPGs.
Scan prior to color and exposure adjustment.Scan after the first round of corrections.
To help promote Conway Scenic Railroad’s culinary services, I arranged to have the company culinary van wrapped with photos of the railroad.
For the sides of the van, I opted for a photo of the Mountaineer at Frankenstein Bridge that I exposed in September 2020. This image appears in many of the railroad’s billboard, print and digital ads and has become a marketing icon.
JPG of the original photo used in the van wrap and other Conway Scenic Railroad advertising.
The back of the van is decorated with a classic view of the North Conway, New Hampshire railroad station that also appears in print ads.
Silverline Graphics assisted with the basic design concept, and SignSmith LLC of Gorham, Maine performed final design and applied the wrap to the van.
I made these photos of the van in the railroad’s North Conway yard.
During our October visit to Dublin, I made this trailing panned photo of LUAS Citadis tram 5040 crossing the famed O’Connell Bridge.
I was working with my Lumix LX7 set at ISO 80, shutter speed 1/100th of a second, and f6.3. The key was maintaining a steady pan motion as the tail-end of the tram passed me.
O’Connell bridge is noteworthy for being wider than it is long.
In August 2006, Denis McCabe and I made an epic tour of Poland by road. Over the course of about two weeks we drove across the country in a rented Opel Astra.
On the evening of 22 August, we photographed this PKP (Polish Railways) SU45 diesel accelerating away from the station at Zwierzyn.
I made this view on Fujichrome with a Nikon F3 with 180mm f2.8 lens.
The glint of the evening sun illuminated the train and the sunflowers in the foreground.
This was among hundreds of my Polish slides that had been stored in Ireland.
Among the thousands of slides that I recently retrieved from storage in Ireland, was this image that I’d exposed on Fujichrome in Bavaria, Germany on January 20, 2008.
Denis McCabe and I were on a week-long photographic exploration of southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
This location on a Deutsche Bahn (DB) single track line at Bad Grönenbach featured traditional German mechanical signaling.
This slide was in a box labled ‘Bavaria, Extras’. (My code to indicate that I’d already culled the preferred images and filed them elsewhere.)
Last night, I scanned the slide using a Nikon LS-5000 Super CoolScan slide scanner powered by VueScan 9.7.08 software.
I selected ‘Ektachrome’ with a ‘White Balance’ color profile and scanned as a TIF at 4000 dpi. Then I imported the scan to Adobe Lightroom and made several JPG variation. The first is scaled without correction. The others display various minor adjustments aimed at improving the image.
Scaled scan, but otherwise unmodified.Scaled with first round of color and contrast correctionsScaled with second round of color corrections, contrast adjustment and minor sharpening.Image with final crop to minimize sky and foreground.
In mid-October, I made a brief stop at Irish Rail’s Drumcondra station on Dublin’s North Side to photograph locomotive 074 leading a laden materials train toward the North Wall.
The sun and clouds cooperated nicely, and I made these digital photos using my Nikon Z6.
This was a fortuitous catch for me as I only had a few minutes to invest before moving on to my next objective. There were times in years past that I may have invested hours to catch an obscure railroad movement, so it was satisfying for me to see this relatively elusive train without much of a wait.
I’m speaking about my Nikkor f2.5 105mm and the famous trestle, and not about a radio station and a monster.
After returning from Ireland, I made a trip to inspect the former Maine Central Mountain Division to check out photo locations for the 470 Club Trip.
Here, I’d hiked into the Frankenstein bridge to see when the sun dipped behind the ridge shadowing the tracks. Owing to the high ridge line the bridge will shadow very quickly on a late fall afternoon.
The eastward Mountaineer was just minutes away when I arrived.
I fitted my old AI Nikkor 105mm to my Nikon Z6 digital camera. This is a magic combination for railroad photography which produced exceptionally sharp photos.
Yesterday, I posted a modified version of this image to Conway Scenic Railroad’s Facebook page and assigned it as the cover photo. It will also be used in late season advertising for the Mountaineer.
Conway Scenic Railroad’s Mountaineer is eastbound on Frakenstein Bridge. New Hampshire’s famed Mount Washington is seen in the distance to the right of bridge.This is a cropped and much enlarged section of the above image to demonstrate the sharpness of my old 105mm.
Kris and I agree that the highlight of our Irish visit was the adventure to Maam Cross.
This heritage railway in progress captures the spirit of rural Irish Railways.
What makes this railway special is its attention to detail, comradery of the participants, and its setting in remote windswept landscape that embodies the West of Ireland.
These are just a few photos from our wonderful visit two weeks ago.
Two weeks ago, Kris and I made a trip to Maam Cross, Co. Galway.
Taking Irish Rail from Dublin to Galway was the first leg of our journey.
My friends working on the Midland Great Western restoration project at Maam Cross, invited and encouraged us to make this bold trip.
From Galway we caught a bus that traveled across the Connemara to the windswept crossroads at Maam Cross, where we set out on foot to reach one of Ireland’s most interesting preserved railways.
LX7 photo at the Maam Cross bus stop.
There we were greeted by the lads working to transform a portion of the old Clifden Branch into Ireland’s most scenic railway excursion.
Shortly after arrived we were greeted by wind, rain, hail, sun and a brilliant rainbow.
We visited the new signal cabin, were given a private train ride, and were able to inspect the progress on this ambitious new preserved railway.
I made these photos with my Lumix LX7 and Nikon Z6.
Noel Enright gives us the signal to depart!Kris gets a lesson in interlocking operations
One of the photographic highlights of last Saturday’s 470 Club trip was the stop at the famous Willey Brook Bridge in Crawford Notch.
To accommodate the train’s passengers, I helped organize two photo runbys at this iconic location.
Since several passengers asked to photograph from the ‘sunnyside’ of the bridge, I walked them across the tracks and called the train into position for the second runby.
I made this selection using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens, and also exposed several color slides using a Nikon F3 film camera.
The first official photo stop on 470 Club’s Autumn 2022 trip (operated by Conway Scenic Railroad on Saturday October 22, 2022) was a photo runby on the Conway Branch at Hussey’s Field in Conway, NH. [I was responsible for the train schedule and assisting with organizing the photo stops.]
I chose this location for the first photo stop because it offered ample space for all the train’s passengers to spread out; provided good lighting for an eastward (northward) morning train; and was largely free from shadows, and distracting background elements.
This was the only photo stop on the former Boston & Maine Conway Branch. The other arranged photo locations were all on the former Maine Central Mountain Division
I made these photos using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens.
More photos from the 470 Club trip to follow in the coming days.
Dublin’s Pearse Station, formerly known as Westland Row, is credited as the world’s oldest city railway station in continuous use.
This has served as a passenger station since 1834 when it opened as the Dublin terminus for the Dublin & Kingstown Railway.
The balloon style train shed was built many years later.
While traveling around Dublin earlier this month, I arrived at Pearse with an aim of photographing the trainshed following extensive works to repair it. The last time I’d visited Pearse was back in November 2019, nearly three years ago.
I made several photos of passing DART suburban electric trains under the shed using my Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera.
Then, I spotted an old friend and we caught up over a few pints at a nearby pub, as you do.
Honestly, it sounds like the sort of place where you’d find a witch!
In truth, its the convergence of Dublin’s LUAS, Irish Rail’s suburban service, and the the Royal Canal.
I’d traveled on the LUAS Green Line extension from the Dublin City Centre to the end of the line. Soft afternoon sun with fluffy clouds allowed for myriad angles of the trams and the railway.
I had a tight connection of less than ten miutes from the time I stepped off the tram until the train for Pearse Station arrived.
During this interval, I used my Nikon Z6 to make a few photos. There’s nothing like a footbridge to provide needed elevation.
Broombridge, Dublin, Ireland.Note the footbridge to the right of the tram.There are relatively few places to get good views of the tops of LUAS trams.An Irish Rail 29000-series CAF built diesel railcar approaches its station stop at Broombridge. The old Royal Canal is to the right of the railway.Broombridge offers a convenient transfer point between the LUAS and Irish Rail.
In 2018, Translink introduced a new bus service using stylized articulated buses called Gliders.
The short version is that the Gliders are buses that look and sound like trams (complete with LUAS Citadis like ‘bong bong’ warning signals), but operate on the road.
While Kris and I were walking around Belfast last week, I made of number of photos of the stylish Gliders on the move through the city streets.
I have to admit, that while I’ve photographed the Gliders, I still haven’t traveled on one.
A week ago, Kris and I traveled from Belfast Great Victoria Street to the Titanic Quarter Station in order to visit the Belfast Titanic museum, located on the waterfront near the the famous Harland & Wolff cranes.
I made these digital photos using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens. I also made a few Ektachrome colour slides with a Nikon F3.
During our month-long visit to Ireland, I’ve been exposing both digital and film photos as part of the record of our honeymoon, and as a continuation of the photography of Ireland and its railways that I began back in 1998.
On my list for photographs for this trip to Ireland was the famous Boyne Viaduct at Drogheda.
Last Saturday evening, Kris and I walked to the river from the Scholars Townhouse Hotel, and were delighted when a set of Irish Rail class 29000 railcars rolled southward over the bridge.
It was in the ‘blue hour’ just after sunset. To stop the action, I set the ISO on my Nikon Z6 to 8,000. This allowed for a shutter speed of 1/160th of a second at f4.
Kris and I stopped over at Glounthaune on the way from Kent Station, Cork to Cobh.
This is a familiar station to me, and over the years I’ve exposed many photos here.
I made this selection during our 15 minutes between trains using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens. The tide was out and we spotted a pelican among the other seabirds near the station platforms.
At Cobh, we found a photo on the wall that shows how Glounthaune looked in the 1960s when it was called Cobh Junction.
The other evening, we paid a visit to the abandoned Chetwynd Viaduct that spans the Cork-Bandon road in County Cork, Ireland.
This was a spur of the moment visit. I was not carrying my tripod. However, through the magic of modern digital photography, I was able to make a few images of this unusal bridge.
These were made using my Nikon Z6 handheld with f4.0 24-70mm lens with ISO set to 51,200. The results are a bit grainy (pixelated), but amazing considering the scant amount of available light.
For another view of the Chetwynd Viaduct, see my post from 2015:
Thanks to our friends in Cork, the other evening Kris and I made a few photos of Irish Rail’s Cobh Branch near Cork’s Kent Station.
It had rained (and rather hard at that) before the clouds cleared for some intense evening sun. These were great conditions for photos.
Irish Rail’s 2600-series diesel railcars have been working the Cork-Cobh run since my first visit in 1998, but now these are on borrowed time.
I made these digital photos using my Nikon Z6. I’m curious to see how my Kodak Ektachrome 100 slides will turn out.
It was beginning to rain when I made this photo of 2600-series railcars arriving on Plaform 1 in Cork. Within the hour the skies had cleared.Less than an hour after the above photo, I made this view of an arriving train from Cobh.Good ol’ 2616 at Kent Station, Cork.Cork-bound train from an overhead bridge.
