Among my black & white negatives from years gone by, is a sheet of 16 frames of 120 Kodak Tri-X that I exposed using my father’s old Rolleiflex Model-T in August of 1986.

I’d spent a week in Maine visiting with my friend Robert A. Buck, proprietor of Tucker’s Hobbies in Warren, Massachusetts.

Among his other guests was photographer Brandon Delaney. During our visit, Brandon and I spent several days exploring Maine railways, including Bangor & Aroostook, Belfast & Moosehead Lake, Canadian Pacific and Maine Central.

On a visit to Searsport, I made this photo of the freight that ran four or five days a week from Northern Maine Junction (near Bangor) to Searsport. The locomotives were working trackage that served the Searsport Pier.

Film was precious. I only brought a few rolls of 35mm Kodachrome and several 120 rolls of black & white.

This scene was back-lit, but I felt it was sufficiently worthy to invest one frame. I scanned it the other day and made a few improvements to contrast, eliminated some spots and scaled the output for presentation here.

A lot has changed since August 1986. I wonder when the last train used the Searsport Pier?

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