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Killer Combo—Super Angulon and Pan-X

May 13, 1984: I was four weeks away from graduating high school. On that day I traveled with Bob Buck and met friends on the ‘B&A West End’ (Conrail’s former Boston & Albany climb over Washington Hill).

At Middlefield, Massachusetts the deep chug of big General Electric diesels alerted us to a westward freight.

Working with my Leica IIIA fitted with my dad’s 21mm Super Anglon, I exposed this series of black & white photos.

The Super Angulon was a favorite lens, but best used judiciously. Another key to the success of these photos was my film choice : Kodak’s Panatomic-X.

Rated at ISO 32, this super fine grain black & white emulsion offered super sharp images and wonderful tonality. The difficulty was its slow speed. It was really only practical on very bright days.

Looking back at my many photos made in the early 1980s, I wish I’d used Panatomic-X more often, rather than my preferred film of time: Kodak Tri-X (rated at ISO 400). If I’d had the resources, I sould have had multiple cameras with different types of film in each. Oh wait . . . I think I had another camera that day . . . and it was loaded with Kodak Ektachrome 200.

Those slides are for another post on another day.

Conrail had just ten GE C30-7s, locomotives 6600-6609, and in the the 1980s these were often assigned to the Boston Line. In mid-1984, the railroad began receiving its order for fifty C30-7As. Where the C30-7s had 16 cylinder engine that feature a louder heavier sound, the C30-7As, used a 12-cyldiner engine, and I believe were fitted with more effective sound emissions controls, which muted the sounds of their exhaust. The three C30-7s working this heavy westbound shook the earth at Middlefield that morning nearly 42 years ago!

Tracking the Light Looks Back at Conrail!