Yesterday evening at CP83 in Palmer, Massachusetts in time-honored tradition, Kris and I rolled by Amtrak 448—the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited
I made these photos with my Lumix LX7. Working from the camera RAW, I made necessary adjustments in Lightroom to control highlight detail, color balance and contrast.
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In 1991, Southern Pacific was still routing through freight over its West Valley route between Tehama and Davis, California.
Photographer Brian Jennison and I were on our way to photograph streamlined steam locomotive 4449 at Redding on August 31, 1991 (featured yesterday on TTL), when we intercepted a westward SP freight working its way along the West Valley route.
Although we were a little tight on time for the steam locomotive, we decided to make the most of this fortuitous find, and photographed the freight twice, once just south (timetable west) of Willows, California and again 15 minutes later near Delavan.
This was one of just a few SP trains that I photographed on the West Valley route that was sold off a couple of years later to a short line start-up called California Northern. I revisited this territory in 2003 and again in 2005, to photograph and travel on California Northern’s local freight.
Photos were exposed on black & white film with a Leica M2 fitted with 50mm Summicron, and cropped slightly for effect.
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In August 1991, I made this image on Southern Pacific’s dime.
For three days I was commissioned by Southern Pacific to photograph the famous 4449 with Daylight train working excursions between Redding and Mount Shasta.
Fellow photographer Brian Jennison and I had traveled up from the Bay Area and had three days of glorious California sun.
Most of my photos of 4449 were exposed on Kodachrome 25 using my Nikon F3T, and these have been published in magazines, books, postcards and calendars over years. However, I was also working with black & white film, probably Ilford FP4, which I exposed using my old Leica M2 with 50mm Summicron.
My notes from the day show that I’d set the camera at f4.5 1/250. I’d used a yellow filter and processed the film in Edwall FG7 to give the photo a period appearance. My intent was to replicate the look of 1940s-era publicity of photos of SP’s Daylight.
The few B&W photos I made that day have never been published.
Tracking the Light Looks Back 31 years!
Over the last few days I’ve been reviewing thousands of my photos of Union Pacific trains for consideration in a book that I’m completing on the railroad. Consider the photo below:
Six years ago, I was poised at Woodford, California along the former Southern Pacific in the Tehachapis to photograph an ascending Union Pacific freight heading toward Tehachapi Summit.
Leading was a clean SD70ACe with UP’s bold wings painted on the front.
I made a sequence of images as the train passed. This one caught my eye because it really shows the sharp angles of this powerful diesel-electric at work.
The contrast between the sunlit locomotive nose and the inky shadows along the side the locomotive combined with a little telephoto compression helped make for a more dramatic image.
Would an evenly lit photo have the same effect?
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Conway Scenic Railroad’s afternoon train returning from Conway is one of the best to photograph during the summer.
Two days in a row this week, I caught this train as it approached its station stop at the North Conway Station.
Both images were exposed using my Nikon Z6.
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Does equipment make a difference?
When I started producing Tracking the Light a decade ago, my thought was to offer very detailed essays focused on photographic technique, processes, and how to make the most of specific pieces of equipment.
My format has since morphed into something less detailed and more visual.
I often carry my Lumix LX7 digital camera because it is compact, lightweight and yet has the ability to make exceptionally sharp photos that I can use in books and magazines.
Yesterday, I made these images with the LX7 of Conway Scenic steam locomotive 7470. I used some photos for the company Facebook page and hope to use them in advertising.
Although these photos were scaled, what you see here are the in-Camera JPGs without significant alteration to color, contrast, exposure or sharpness.
If I were working with a different digital camera system, how might that have changed my results?
Yesterday, I also exposed some Ektachrome of 7470 using my 30-year old Nikon F3 with f1.8 105mm lens.
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Earlier in the week, Conway Scenic operated a ballast train with GP35 216 to Crawford Notch and then worked its way east through the famous Gateway cut and over the Girders bridge.
There was cosmic lighting, with low clouds scraping over the tops of the mountains with shafts of sunlight reaching the ground.
To gain necessary elevation, I climbed up into the Gateway cut, following in the footsteps of generations of previous photographers.
I exposed these photos using my Nikon Z6.
Seven years ago I was visiting my friend Markku Pulkkinen in Oulu, Finland.
On the evening of July 25th, we stopped in at the VR station to witness the arrival of sleeping car train IC266 that paused on its way to Helsinki.
In the lead were a pair of 1970s era Sr1 electrics that were built in the Soviet Union and still carried their ‘USSR’ builder’s tags (notably in English, rather than Russian or Finnish).
I exposed these detail views using my new FujiFilm XT1 digital camera.
The Fuji’s built-in color profiles did a wonderful job of capturing the rich colors of the evening sun at northerly latitudes.
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May 4, 1997: I exposed this Fujichrome slide of Amtrak’s westward Lake Shore Limited (Boston section), train 449 rolling down the Quaboag River Valley near the former Boston & Albany station at West Brimfield, Massachusetts.
This was at a time when the train was carrying a fair amount of freight and mail on the head and tail ends of the passenger consist, and shortly before Amtrak replaced the old EMD F40PHs with new Genesis P42 diesels.
It was just about two years before Conail’s class 1 operations were divided and the old Boston & Albany was conveyed to CSX.
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Yesterday, TEC Associates came to survey and measure Conway Scenic Railroad’s North Conway turntable and the table’s ring rail in preparation for repairs to the vintage equipment.
The former Boston & Maine North Conway turntable is a rare surviving example of a pneumatically actuated turntable and is equipped with air reservoirs that are designed to be filled from the locomotive’s airbrake system.
I made the top three images with my Nikon Z6 fitted with an old Nikkor AI f1.8 105mm lens; the fourth image was exposed with using an f4.0 24-70mm Series Z zoom fitted to the the Z6.
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Sometimes it helps just to be there.
Yesterday morning I arrived at North Conway early to open the station and serve as ‘Manager on Duty’ (Station Master, Yard Master and Train Dispatcher).
When I pulled up to the station a rainbow was clinging to the sky above the building.
I grabbed by Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm lens, and made a sequence of images of the station building in morning light with prismatic colors above.
Minutes after I made this photo, the light had changed and the rainbow faded.
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In June 2008, I visited San Diego, California for the day and traveled around on the famous San Diego Trolley.
I made this view of the Orange Line near downtown.
I can’t help but wonder, where is everybody?
I’ve photographed light rail in dozens of cities, and usually there’s lots of people about. This was a pleasantly warm weekday afternoon in San Diego and there’s virtually no one on the street. Bizarre!
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Back in 1990, Amtrak’s westward California Zephyr, train No.5, typically traversed Donner Pass midday.
On this July 1990 afternoon, the train was several hours behind the advertised. I pictured it near Gold Run, California on the west slope of Donner.
I’ve been going through my Southern Pacific and Union Pacific photos searching for material for my next book on Union Pacific and its component railroads.
Although this is an old favorite photo, I’ll likely defer to images that show SP or UP freight trains for the final book selections.
Scanned with a Nikon LS 5000 slide scanner. Multipass scan.
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In recent months, my Fiancée Kris and I have been revisiting Canadian Pacific’s Moosehead Sub across Maine.
Previously, I’d explored this remote railway on various occasions in the 1980s and 1990s.
On September 30, 1997, I accompanied photographers George Pitarys and Brian Jennison to the famed Onawa Bridge located west of Brownville Junction.
Here we waited for Canadian American eastward freight 902, seen here in a 24mm trailing view exposed on Kodachrome 25 slide film.
I scanned the slide last night using a Nikon LS 5000 scanner, making a multipass scan at high-resolution, and then scaling the TIF file using Adobe Lightroom.
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Yesterday, I was discussing photography with my Fiancée, Kris as we drove through rural western Maine.
I explained that I rarely display the photos that I feel are my finest work.
Why? The reason is very simple. I made the best photos for me, and I can be selfish. I put a huge amount of work into some of these images and I’m holding them back for just the right moment.
In 1994, I spent months photographing Southern Pacific. One of my favorite lines was SP’s remote Modoc Line, especially the section built on the old Nevada-California-Oregon three-foot gauge alignment across the Modoc Plateau between Wendel and Alturas, California.
At the end of the day on May 21, 1994, I was poised near Indian Camp, waiting beneath a desert sky with chocolate clouds as a Wendel-bound freight worked across the desert floor. Beyond, the railroad twisted and turned through the Likely Loop and up toward the sinuous Indian Camp Loop.
For more than half and hour, I could hear the low harmonic pulsating exhaust of EMD 20-cylinder diesels as the train gradually drew closer.
Working with my Nikon F3T loaded with K25 slide film, I exposed a series of silhouettes as the long freight growled through Indian Camp.
In 1999, I published one of these images on page 11 of my book titled Narrow Gauge Locomotives.
The rest remain sequestered.
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On a warm July day 19 years ago, I made this view of Canadian National EMD diesels at Richmond, Quebec.
I exposed the photo on Fujichrome using my Contax G2 rangefinder
The film processing was flawed and resulted in reticulation that caused clumping of the grain structure.
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Earlier this week, Conway Scenic Railroad welcomed TV host-producer Greg Boghosian and his cameraman John at North Conway station and aboard the Mountaineer to Crawford Notch. Greg and John were filming for an upcoming episode of #NewEnglandTraveler that will appear on NESN.
I provided logistical support, historical context, arranged for tickets and interviews with employees, and suggested angles and locations for photography. Greg is a true professional with a couple of Emmys to his credit. It was a pleasure to work with him.
I made this selection of photographs for Conway Scenic’s social media platforms and future advertising.
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Six years ago (July 13, 2016) John Gruber and I paid a visit to the Illinois Railway Museum and I made a series of photos using my FujiFilm XT1 with 12mm Zeiss Tuoit.
I’ve cropped the foreground in this photo and adjusted contrast and exposure to compensate for the dull weather.
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Eight years ago, I photographed a ‘Supermoon’ rising over Palmer, Massachusetts using my Canon EOS-3 with 200mm lens.
It was a cosmic event, but with out a steel wheel in sight.
I was disappointed that a westward freight didn’t roll into view on CSX’s Boston & Albany route that day, but I positioned myself to photograph the moon with the old signals at CP83 anyway.
CSX has since replaced the signals.
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On July 11, 2016, John E. Gruber collected me at Lake Forest, Illinois. I’d just recently arrived from the East Coast on Amtrak’s Cardinal.
After lunch, we drove to Kenosha, Wisconsin to photograph and travel on the historic PCC trolley cars that operate in a two-mile loop through the center of the town.
It was a beautiful afternoon for photography on the shore of Lake Michigan. I made this pair of images using my FujiFilm XT1 digital camera.
In 2016, I made this post to Tracking the Light:
http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/2016/07/15/kenosha-wisconsin-pccs-july-2016/
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Five years ago today (July 10, 2017), I traveled on SEPTA to the old Reading Company station at Chestnut Hill (now Chestnut Hill East) where I made this selection of photos using my Lumix LX7.
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In September 2015, I flew from Dublin to Köln, Germany with my Irish friends.
At the Köln Hbf (main station), we walked across the Rhein on the footpath along the six track multispan railrway bridge.
At the time this was covered in lover’s locks. So many that there were concerns about the excessive weight on the heavily-built bridge.
From the east bank, I made this Fujichrome Provia 100F color slide of the bridge and the famous cathedral. Back-lighting helped to illuminate the locks on the bridge.
I scanned the slide yesterday using our Nikon LS-5000 digital scanner driven with VueScan software. I made a multipass scan and imported the file into AdobeLightroom for final adjustment and scaling.
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A few weeks ago, I accompanied the Conway Scenic Railroad ballast train on its journey up the Mountain.
I had multiple things on my agenda: we needed a accurate accessment of where ballast was needed for future trips; I wanted to inspect the limits of some recent slow orders; I’m looking to rework the company Timetable and was checking various aspects of the right-of-way; and I wanted to photograph the ballast train crew at work.
Many years ago, I traveled with a branch line ballast train in Ireland, where the locomotive driver said to me, “My crew, they’re allergic to work!”
Nothing could further from the truth with Conway Scenic’s work train crew. Dumping stone is a physically taxing job and not for the faint of heart. Our guys put 110 percent of effort into the job and earn every dime of their pay.
By contrast, all I had to do was run along with the train, make notes and expose digital photos—a few of which I’ve posted here.
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I like allusive titles . . .
At 6:38am on March 15, 1997 near Sagers, Utah, photographer Mel Patrick & I were set up to photograph this Burlington Northern Santa Fe container-on-flatcar/trailer-on-flatcar train as it worked east behind a pair of former Burlington Northern SD40-2s.
I exposed this color slide on Fujichrome film using my Nikon N90S with 80-200 zoom lens. Although this image appeared in print many years ago, I opted to scan it last night using an Nikon LS-5000 scanner for presentation here.
I like the pink sky, I feel it goes well with my mixed-metaphorical Pink Floyd title reference.
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In October 1999, I was working for Great Train Escapes, a Seattle-based tour company that operated fall foliage rail excursions in New England in conjunction with its regional bus tours.
Part of the itinerary was to travel on a neo-streamliner from the Portland, Maine area to Gorham, New Hampshire. The train in 1999 was part of a leased set normally operated by the Copper Canyon Train in Mexico.
I made this sunrise view with an Nikon N90s loaded with Fujichrome at Danville Junction—where St. Lawrence & Atlantic crossed Guilford’s Maine Central. The tour buses were unloading the guests to board the train here for the journey to Gorham.
The leading locomotive was one of St. Lawrence & Atlantic’s former Canadian National M-420 diesels, behind it are a pair of Amtrak F40PHs, which had been made surplus from long distance survices, as the result recently delivered GE P42s.
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Clearing Yard sunset
On July 1, 1995, I spent the day with Sean Graham-White who had organized a visit at Belt Railway of Chicago’s sprawling Clearing Yard on the southside of Chicago in order to research a detailed article for Pacific RailNews.
At the time, I was associate editor of the magazine and living in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Toward the end of the day, I made this silhouette looking west using my Nikon F3T with 200mm f4.0 Nikkor telephoto. Kodachrome 200, was a grainy film that allowed me to use a faster shutter speed. Notice the plane on approach to Chicago’s Midway Airport.
The inspiration for this image was a photo exposed about 29 years earlier by John Gruber that had appeared on the cover of Trains Magazine.
I made a three-pass scan of this image last night using our recently refurbished Nikon LS-5000 slide scanner controlled by VueScan software.
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On June 29, 2017, photographer Mike Gardner and I had chased Pan Am Railway’s EDPL (East Deerfield to Plainville, Connecticut) freight.
Our final set was of the train crossing the Connecticut River near Windsor Locks on the former New Haven Railroad bridge.
I was working with my first Fuji XT1 digital camera and a telephoto lens. By holding the camera close to the top of the water, I made this dramatic angle of the train.
Last night, I made some changes to contrast, color and exposure to the FujiFilm Raw file (RAF) using Adobe Lightroom aiming to compensate for the hazy evening light.
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I made this view from Glounthuane village of Irish Rail 2600-series railcars near Cobh Junction , Cork on 15 October 2019.
Working with an old Nikon F3 loaded with Kodak Tri-X, I was focused on the train and its reflection in the water.
I processed the film using the following split process formula: Kodak HC110 mixed 1-100 with water for 6 minutes at 73F, followed by a bath of Ilford ID11 1-1 for 6 minutes and 45 sec at 68F; then stop bath; fixer bath 1; fixer bath 2, first rinse, hypo clear, second rinse, and wetting agent with final rinse.
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I made this view in the blue light of dusk on an April evening in April 1997 at Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku Station.
At the time it was the busiest railway junction station in the world, handling more daily passengers that even London’s famous Clapham Junction.
I have used this photograph and others from my 1997 visit in a variety of publications over the last 25 years.
I exposed the photo on Fujichrome with my Nikon N90S mounted on a tripod. I was emulating a style of railway photography popular in the the Japanese magazines at the time which used the extreme blurring of a train through a scene to infer motion.
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In May 2006, while traveling across Hungary by train, I leaned from the window during a station stop at Kisvarda and exposed this Fujichrome slide using my Contax G2 rangefinder.
In a moment, I captured a common scene, portraying a place I know almost nothing about, except that it is a small city served by an intercity railway service.
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Twelve years ago, June 23, 2010, John Gruber and I were following a Canadian Pacific local freight on the former Milwaukee Road north of Madison, Wisconsin.
We were set up near where the railroad ducks under Interstate-94. While waiting for the train, some jet bombers soared overhead at relatively low altitude.
Six minutes later, I made a view of the freight ambling along on class 1 track with a truck roaring overhead on the Interstate.
Both photos were exposed with my then-new Canon 7D with a 200mm prime telephoto. These photos are scaled, but otherwise unadjusted camera JPGs.
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In July 1984, I made a few black & white photos of the Canadian Pacific station at Jackman, Maine using my old Leica 3A with 50mm Canon lens. At that time, Jackman still hosted VIA Rail’s Atlantic and was an open train order station. I had a conversation with the operator before I made my photos.
On my recent visits Jackman earlier this month, I tried to recreat the angle of my earlier eastbound view.
In both photos, I am standing at the Route 201 grade crossing.
The purpose of this comparison is to demonstrate the degree of change at Jackman in the 38-year interval between them. Notice that the 1984 view is far more interesting to look at despite being a technically inferior photograph.
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Eleven years ago, I made this end of daylight view on the longest day of the year at CP83 in Palmer, Massachusetts.
CSX’s westward freight Q423 had stopped to change crews. In those days, Q423 ran from Worcester, Mass., to Selkirk, NY. I cannot recall why the crew was on short time.
I made the exposure using my Canon EOS-7D at 6400 ISO at 1/3 second, f3.5 using a prime 28mm lens.
The Canon 7D is an excellent camera. I’ve had mine for a dozen years and exposed thousands of digital photos with it. It’s higher ISO settings are weak compared with modern cameras. Here the 6400 ISO setting appears relatively pixelated. Yet at the time I was delighted to the ability to use such a fast ISO setting at the twist of a dial.
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On this day nine years ago, I was traveling east from Chicago to Worcester, Massachusetts on Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited (Train 48/448) and made these photos of the journey with my Lumix LX3 digital camera.
At the time I was working on a book about Chicago’s railroads with Mike Blaszak, Chris Guss and John Gruber.
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On June 18, 2010, I was traveling with John Gruber on the way back to Madison, Wisconsin from Minneapolis, where John had collected Wallace Abbey’s photographs recently donated to the Center for Photography & Art.
John wanted to take a look at a surviving portion of the old Green Bay & Western at Hixton Wisconsin. And I made this evening view of grain elevators catching the glinting sun with my Lumix LX3.
Years earlier, John had made a project of photographing GB&W and its people. This was among the smaller railroads melded into Wisconsin Central in the 1990s.
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On our last evening at Moosehead Lake, Kris and I made a strategic drive to Tarratine, Maine hoping to intercept Canadian Pacific’s westbound freight, #223, at the grade crossing with Route 6.
Within five minutes of our arrival, we could hear a whistle far to the east. Gradually the chug of General Electric diesels grew louder and more pronounced.
Kris set up her FujiFilm XT4, while I positioned my Nikon Z6 on my ancient Bogen tripod.
The moon was rising and the stars were glistening above. The time was approaching 11pm.
I made this sequence with the Z6 fitted with my 24-70mm zoom. The camera was set to ISO 400 and my exposures varied from 2.5 seconds to 30 seconds at f4.
After exposure, I made nominal adjustments to color and exposure in Adobe Lightroom.
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