Since through freights tend to run in the evening, the long days offer excellent opportunities for photography on the Port Road Secondary. That proved true last week when we found the signals lined for an eastbound freight as the glow of sunset illuminated the western sky.
Working with my Z6-III with 50mm f1.4, I made these photos near Washington Boro, Pennsylvania.
Tracking the Light explores railroad photography!
The former Pennsylvania Railroad station and adjacent underpass at Christiana, Pa., have been a recurring theme on Tracking the Light. Recently, I posted a sequence from this location, noting that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the results. On Tuesday evening, I set up at a different angle on this familiar scene, this time photographing from street level as Amtrak Keystone 656 raced by.
This image was exposed using a Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera fitted with a 24–70mm Nikkor Z-series zoom lens.
I wondered what the photograph might look like with different historical film profiles applied, so I imported the RAW file into DxO FilmPack 7 and experimented with several presets. Each profile is identified in the caption below its respective image.
Tracking the Light explores railroad photography!
Over hill and dale, following directions supplied by Google Maps, we set out on our first attempt to chase a train between Safe Harbor and Peach Bottom. There were plenty of twists and turns, but we made it!
And finally, after nearly a year of occasional visits—checking the light and sun angles in autumn, winter, and spring—we scored a daylight freight at Peach Bottom.
Hooray!
Tracking the Light Explores Railroad Photography Everyday.
Beginning in 1986, I made a project of photographing vestiges of the former Erie Railroad. While this often included Conrail freights and antique signal installations, I also focused on the railroad’s architecture.
To my knowledge, I made just one photo of this former Erie Railroad passenger station, exposed on Kodachrome 25 in November 1987.
Can you guess the location? Thankfully, I wrote it on the slide mount. I’ve seen relatively few photos of this station.
Tracking the Light Explores Railway Photography!
Central Vermont Railway crossing the Conrail diamonds northbound; Palmer, Massachusetts. In October 1984, I exposed this image using my father’s Rolleiflex Model T loaded with Kodak Vericolor II Type S 120 roll film. I scanned the negative in 2010 using an Epson V500 flatbed scanner. Epson’s software automatically reversed the image and compensated for the orange mask inherent in color negative film. The image required only minimal color adjustment in Lightroom for presentation here.
This was a heavy train ambling east on Norfolk Southern’s Port Road Secondary. Catching a road freight in daylight on this route is always a prize.
We arrived at Blue Rock Road near Washington Boro several minutes ahead of the train.
I made these digital images near the boat launch along the Susquehanna River. I like this location because it is on a long tangent and shows the old Pennsylvania Railroad electrification polls.
Some 45 years have passed since the last electric freight traversed this route.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
At 7pm on June 18, 2026, I’ll be presenting a program on Conway Scenic Railroad to the Philadelphia Chapter NRHS at the Elkins Park SEPTA Station.
It was a clear evening. We paused briefly at Christiana, Pa., to roll by Amtrak Keystone 658.
The scene was unclutered and I wanted to feature the station and underpass that is the centerpiece of former Pennsylvania Railroad infrastructure in the town.
I framed up the station with a broad window of sunlight beyond the railroad bridge over the road.
When train 658 came into view, I exposed a rapid-fire burst of images with my Nikon Z6 fitted with a 24-70mm zoom set to 24mm.
In the first frame of this sequence, ACS-64 643 leading the train hadn’t made it far enough into the photo and an objectionable shadow fell on the side of the locomotive intersecting Amtrak’s logo.
In the second frame, the locomotive appears to be in visual conflict with the trees/hedges in the background.
The third is nearly satisfactory, except the front of the locomotive is alarmingly close to the righthand edge of the photo.
I think this might need another attempt. I just hope that next time I score another freshly cleaned ACS-64.
Tracking the Light Examines Railroad Photography Daily!
A few weeks back on Tracking the Light, I featured a pair of abstract images of a Norfolk Southern freight crossing the arched bridge over Vinegar Ferry Road in Marietta, Pennsylvania.
Kris and I had a fortunate opportunity to return in daylight, arriving just in time to catch a freight rolling by in the early evening.
The long days and sun in the western sky made for some beautiful lighting at this location.
I made this photograph using my Nikon Z6 III fitted with an f/1.4 50mm lens.
This was a heavy train and moving at a relatively slow pace, so, seizing the opportunity, we soon found ourselves in rapid pursuit. I had a few locations in mind where I hoped to photograph a daylight freight on the Port Road Secondary.
Stay tuned . . .
Tracking the Light Explores Railroad Photograph Night and Day!
As a follow up to yesterday’s post Too Much Corn, Too Little Train, today’s post is about some alternative views of the same scene.
Some photographers are content to work with one camera and just one lens, aiming to carefully craft the perfect composition with the tools in hand. I was once that way—when I was young and carried a Leica IIIA everywhere.
Not these days. I usually have at least two cameras with me. Plus a ‘spare’, (you know, just in case.)
So, when I wasn’t 100 percent sure about my ‘perfect composition’ with wavey corn, I reached for my Z7-II fitted with a 70-200mm and popped off a few long views.
In the end, I much prefer these telephoto images over the wide views displayed yesterday. But, I thought, I’d argue otherwise.
Today, Tracking the Light Takes the Telephoto View!
It seemed like a great idea for a textured composition: wavy rows of corn illuminated by the late afternoon sun. I set up my Nikon Z6 with a 24–70mm lens on a tripod and framed the scene.
Strasburg Rail Road’s 4 p.m. train was returning from Leaman Place, working up the short grade from Cherry Hill toward Esbenshade Road.
Sometimes the engine crew makes a bit of smoke while climbing the grade. Not today, though. The engineer kept a clean stack—great for efficiency, but I was hoping for a little smoke to help tie the scene together.
Instead, the train is almost lost amid the waves of corn and scruffy trees.
Nice try; no prize…
However, I had a second camera fitted with a long telephoto lens…
Tracking the Light Critically Examines Railroad Photography!
Another night, another unit coal train.
This one had quite a roll on when we caught up with it at Columbia, Pa., on Norfolk Southern’s Port Road Branch
“There’s the head-end!”
“That’s the mid-train DPU. . . “
“Oh. . . “
I knew with a bit of driving we would still beat it to Safe Harbor.
We arrived in near total darkness, and I thought I’d try a different angle, so I set up for broadside view on the NS bridge, while featuring the lowest bridge in the foreground, and the old Enola Low Grade Bridge up above.
At one time all three carried tracks.
We didn’t wait long before the chug of GE’s shattered the evening quiet.
For the headend, I had my Nikon Z6-III on a tripod, but for the coal cars and DPU photos, I panned the train hand-held.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily About Railroad Photography!
Here we have a former Burlington Northern SD40-2 on Wisconsin & Southern casting its reflection in a puddle in the Madison, Wisconsin yard.
How long does it take you to spot and recognize the incongruous element in this scene?
Using my Canon EOS 7D, I made this image during a visit to Madison with John Gruber in June 2013. Below are two versions processed from the original Canon CR2 RAW file using DxO PureRAW. The top image was converted to JPEG without cosmetic corrections in Adobe Lightroom. The bottom image received a subtle contrast adjustment in DxO PhotoLab, making the incongruous detail easier to spot.
Tracking the Light examines perception!
The grime of mud season has been washed away and the crisp Spring evening sun makes for some nice light.
I arrived at Jefferson Drive about five minutes before Amtrak Keystone 658 was due to pass. (It takes about three minutes to reach this location after departing the Amtrak station in Lancaster, Pa.)
A month ago, I was framing up photos to make the most of evening glint. This time of year, by the time 658 passes the sun is still high in the western sky.
Rather than make a hard glint photo, I opted for a broadside view to make the most of the bright specular light. I set my Nikon Z6-III with a comparatively slow shutter speed (1/250th) in order to make a panned photo making use of speed blur to help separate the Amtrak electric locomotive from the foreground and background.
Here are three photos exposed in rapid succession as the train raced east.
Tracking the Light Explores Railroad Photography!
A few nights ago, Kris and I were driving down Greenfield Road in Lancaster and a westward Keystone zipped by overhead with Amtrak ACS-64 642 working at the back of the consist. This is wears the stylish Veterans paint livery. Neat!
Yesterday afternoon it was clear and bright, so I went over to Christiana to catch Keystone trains on the move.
I didn’t wait long, when the rails started singing the approach of train 656 from Harrisburg.
This was led by the cherry red front unique to ACS-64 642.
Lucky break!
I exposed this burst of images using my Nikon mirrorless Z6-III with 24-70mm lens.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
Twenty-seven years ago, my father and I drove to Amsterdam, New York, to begin our epic two-day final photo shoot of Conrail. Twenty-three years earlier, at the end of March 1976, Pop and I had spent two days photographing New York-area railroads on the eve of Conrail.
At Guy Park, west of Amsterdam on the old Water Level Route, we watched the evening parade. Working with a Canon EOS Elan fitted with a 75–300mm Canon zoom lens (lent to me by Canon), I framed this view of an eastward multilevel freight catching the setting sun’s glint below the 177 automatic signals.
Last night, I improved a scan of the original slide using Lightroom, darkening the shadow areas to accentuate the reflections, make the glint more pronounced, and increase the drama of the moment.
I’m impressed by the way the Canon lens and Fujichrome film successfully captured the clear signal’s green aspect on the signal bridge. In my film days, I often struggled to photograph clear signals, which tended to overexpose in low light.
50 years after its creation, Tracking the Light marks the passage of Conrail—long live Big Blue!
As regular TTL readers may recognize, I’ve been working on this location for a while now.
A few weeks back, we picked up a southward Norfolk Southern coal train rolling along the Port Road Branch and followed it to the bridges at Safe Harbor.
We arrived with a few minutes to spare, so in the darkness I aimed to improve my angle on the tracks. Previous nocturnal views had unfortunately featured a wire, and this annoyed me, so I located a tighter view without the wire.
The Safe Harbor Dam is out of sight on the far side of the bridges, but the dam’s lighting provides a halo that helps to illuminate the train on the bridge while enabling a silhouette, which I like. While the evening mist along the Susquehanna enables the ‘laser-beam’ headlight effect. Too much backlight and the laser effect would be lost.
Exposed using my Nikon Z6-III mirrorless digital camera with f1.8 50mm lens. Exposure f1.8 at 1/100th ISO 40,000, processed with DxO PureRaw5.
Tracking the Light Explores Night Photography!
I was reviewing some of my early slide scans and found this intriguing but troublesome image.
On a July evening in 1994, I’d exposed this Kodachrome 25 slide of an eastward Burlington Northern freight east of Marias Pass at Grizzley, Montana.
I’m looking back toward Glacier National Park using my old Nikkor f4.0 200mm lens.
This image looks impressive on a slide screen in a darkened room, but requires attention with digital post processing.
Below is the original scan, made using my old Epson V500 Flatbed Scanner followed by the same scan with color, contrast and exposure adjustment using Adobe Lightroom.
I need to locate the original slide, one of thousands in my Burlington Northern file, and rescan it using my Nikon LS5000 with VueScan software. This may allow for an improved image that retains a greater amount of detail and improved sharpness.
Tracking the Light Explores Railroad Photography!
In the heat of the day, I took a walk at Amos Herr Park in Landisville, Pa., aiming to catch Amtrak Keystone 652 on its eastward journey over the former Pennsylvania Railroad.
I exposed this pair of images as the headend zipped by.
The second one is a hair to close by my normal standard. The front of the engine is visually intersecting a tree in the park. Is this a problem? Will the image age well?
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
I thought about giving this the title, “Snapping Up an HST.”
In June 2010, I bought my first (and only) DSLR: a Canon EOS 7D.
It’s a great camera, and I’ve made thousands of photographs with it.
Canon is famous for its color palette. However, I’ve often felt that many of my early digital images were somewhat lackluster in terms of contrast and composition.
The other day, I imported a variety of my Canon CR2 RAW files into DxO PureRAW 5 for DeepPRIME XD3 correction and conversion to DNG files for subsequent adjustment in Lightroom.
Among the images I felt needed improvement was file 4875, which I exposed in December 2010 in the United Kingdom. It depicts a former East Midlands HST racing north near Harpenden on the old Midland Main Line.
Below are representations of the original CR2 file. Both have been scaled as JPGs for internet presentation. The top image is shown without adjustment or conversion; the bottom image reflects an improved PureRAW interpretation of the RAW data, along with a variety of nominal changes to color, contrast, and exposure.
This remains a work in progress, as I’m curious to see how Word Press file compression alters my adjusted files in their final presentation here.
Tracking the Light Looks Back!
Fresh foliage and soft Spring sun in a pastoral setting made for idylic timeless images of No. 89 working Strasburg Rail Road’s midday excursion to Paradise and back.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve photographed steam locomotives along the Strasburg Rail Road from dozens of angles. Despite the familiarity of the subject, every visit yields different photographs and I never tire of listening to the locomotives at work.
I made these images with my Nikon Z cameras.
Tracking the Light Examines Railroad Photography!
The inside of the Tamaqua Station Restaurant is resplandant in the glory of its former function.
Over conversation of trains and travels, I heard a note.
“I hear a whistle.”
We paused.
“That was the music playing”
Again, the note. This time louder.
We jumped up, I reached for my camera bag and darted for the door.
We stepped onto the station platform as a pair of Reading & Northern six-motor EMDs approached. These came to a stop in front of the station giving us time to make a few photos.
After a couple of digital images with the Nikon Z6, I exposed a series of color slides using my father’s old Leica M4 loaded with Ektachrome. Then I made some more digital photos, aiming to capture the locomotives with the station as well as more detailed views.
Soon the engines were reversing back toward the Tamaqua yard, and we resumed conversation over lunch inside the restaurant. In our absence, the food had arrived.
Tracking the Light examines railroad photography!
Never mind taking a ride on the Reading — why not enjoy lunch at the former Reading Company station in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania?
I caught up with my old friend and fellow photographer Dan Howard for lunch at the Tamaqua Station Restaurant. I’ve always had good luck here. The food is excellent, and more often than not, the Reading & Northern runs a train.
I made these photos using my Nikon Z6.
Where’s the train? Patience, patience. We heard a horn and made a swift exit to the platform . . . (stay tuned).
Tracking the Light explores Railroad Photography!
I was hoping to again catch Amtrak trains passing at Christiana.
Instead, I caught trains 651 and 656 passing the old Pennsylvania Railroad station at Christiana a few minutes apart.
When I see these aged trains, I recall the old Metroliner, which I experienced in its early days as America’s super fast New York to Washington service.
In an era when American railroading seemed to be on the verge of extinction, the Metroliner offered another vision—one of speed and hope.
Soon these former Metroliner cab cars will join the old Metroliner as memories of another era.
Tracking the Light chases ghosts!
On our way through New Ringgold, Pa., we spotted a classic station building along the Reading & Northern.
“Wait, what’s that? It wasn’t here the last time!”
We stopped to investigate the traditional halt, built in the style of many small station structures once common on the old Reading Company.
R&N was performing track work up the line, so there was little chance of catching a train on this visit. But, it would b a be cool place to make an action photograph in the future.
You just never know what you might find along the lines of the R&N!
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
In March, I stood trackside at Newark, Delaware with fellow photographer Doug Scott. We were fortunate to catch an Amtrak maintenace train with freshly painted GP38-3 744 in the lead (see: https://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/fresh-paint-on-a-classic-emd/).
I was working with two cameras; a Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital body with 24-70mm Nikkor Z-series zoom, and my father’s old Leica M4 with f1.4 35mm Summilux prime wide-angle loaded with Kodak Ektachrome 100.
Below are a pair of successive images; the first is a digital image exposed as an NEF RAW image using the Nikon, the second was on Ektachrome with the Leica. The slide was processed at AgX Imaging and scanned using a Nikon LS-5000 scanner. Both received very nominal post-processing in Lightroom to adjust contrast/gamma, and color bias to make the most of the data captured.
I like both images for different reasons.
Occasionally I’m asked why I continue to work with traditional color slides. That’s a long story. The simplest answers are: aesthetics, continuity and longevity. The latter seems to upset some photographers, so I’ll leave that for a later discussion.
Tracking the Light Explores Railroad Photography!
This is a follow up to my popular post ‘Trash’, from January, featuring Norfolk Southern on the New Holland Branch (New Holland Secondary) at Willow Road in Lanscaster, Pa., which generated near-record interest on TTL.
In that, I examine my composition of a pastoral setting:
“Beautiful over-the-shoulder morning winter sun made for excellent lighting conditions. I made a few digital images and exposed some color slides with the Leica M4.
When I downloaded the digital images, I discovered to my dismay that at the time of exposure I’d failed to notice the bit of red trash in the tree branches. Poor show!”
For comparison, the image displayed in this post is one of the 35mm Ektachrome color slides that I exposed on that day. In this view, I’d cropped the offending trash from the scene.
There’s something to be said for working with an old school rangefinder!
Tracking the Light works with film and digital images!
April and May were weedspraying season on Irish Rail. Back in the day I was pretty familiar with this program.
The Irish Rail weedspray train was something of a tradition and I made countless photos of it working around the network.
On 14 April, 2009, I exposed this telephoto view on Fujichrome of the weedspraying train working up-road at Cherryville Junction in the midst of a torrential deluge. It was well worth getting wet. It was one of the last times I saw a pair of Irish Rail Bo-Bos (small General Motors diesels, classes 141 and 181) working on the main line.
I made this scan of the slide on 30 April 2009 using my then-new Epson V500 scanner. This was my first scanner and it served me well for more than a decade. Approximately six months later I bought my first digital camera, a Lumix LX3—a model recommended to me by Eric Rosenthal. I made more than 65,000 exposures my original LX3, but that story was still in the future.
Tracking the Light Looks Back!
Ample ambient streetlight makes the old Pennsylvania Railroad station in Columbia a suitable situation for nocturnal railroad imagery.
Even on the inkiest of evenings there’s just enough light to stop a train.
In this photo, Norfolk Southern freight H19 is westbound from Lancaster, Pa., on its return to Enola Yard led by three SD60Es with 78 cars in tow.
Exposed using a Nikon Z6-III with Nikkon 50mm f1.4 lens set to its widest aperture, 1/320 second at ISO 12800. Image processed with DxO PureRaw5 to minimize noise.
Tracking the Light examines railroad night photography.
It might be small, but my old Lumix LX7 is a pretty powerful camera.
As we pulled up to Paradise Lane in Strasburg, the Saturday evening train was just rolling across the crossing.
My Nikons were tucked away, but my trusty Lumix was close at hand.
I made this photo from the driver’s window of our car.
I have my Lumix camera set up to simultaneously expose in JPG and RAW formats. Here’s I’ve adjusted the RAW file for this image to make the most of the evening sky.
Tracking the Light explores Railway Image Making.
Often in our drives around Strasburg, I’ve gazed across the field near the Esbenshade farm, as Strasburg Rail Road’s returning excursion was on its last leg to the East Strasburg station—its engine gliding along, firebox a-glow, and a wisp of condensation and smoke trailing from its stack.
A couple of weeks ago, I was 30 seconds ahead of the returning train, and noted there was no traffic behind me. I saw a clean place to pull over, and I thought, ‘now’s my chance!’
My Z7-II was fitted with the ‘big zoom’ (70-200mm), and I lined up my shots just as I’d seen them so my time from the car, carefully aiming to place the locomotive neatly against the background, while timing the turn of the drivers to catch them ‘rods down’.
Soft Spring sunshine helps.
Tracking the Light Explores the Details of Railroad Photography!
Massive double coal trains typically work Norfolk Southern’s Port Road Secondary with two units on the headend and a remote pair mid-train.
We had rolled NS 622 by Riverfront Park in Marietta, Pa., then followed it east to Columbia, where I made this sequence of the train looming out of the darkness and passing the signals at the east end of Cola interlocking.
For the headend, I had my N6-III mounted on a 3Pod tripod, which kept it steady, allowing for the setting to remain sharp despite the relatively inky gloom while the locomotive display a bit of motion blur. When the mid-train DPUs approached, I opted for a hand-held pan sequence which kept the locomotives sharp while the setting blurred. I like the panned photos better.
Tracking the Light explores darkness.
In May 1985, I was on the last leg of a two-week railroad trip.
I’d used up most of my film making photos of trains at a variety of destinations and stopovers from Atlanta, to Cumberland, Chicago and Toronto.
On this final bright morning, I rolled by the action at Dorval in suburban Montreal.
Although I still had a few frames of 120 black & white film left in my father’s Rolleiflex, along with some Kodachrome 64 loaded in my Leica 3A, I opted to make this image on 35mm black & white film using a spare Leica fitted with an old Elmar lens with antiquated coatings. While sharp, the lens was poorly suited to modern image-making. Complicating matters, I did a poor job processing the film.
My results were flat, grainy, and uninspired. I wish I’d used the tools at hand to make a better photograph of this VIA Rail LRC—an MLW-powered tilting train, the likes of which I’m unlikely ever to see again.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
On this day 157 years ago, a ceremonial golden spike marked the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah.
On this day 134 years ago, as a well crafted publicity stunt, New York Central & Hudson River Railroad No. 999 made its world-famous speed run leading the Empire State Express toward Buffalo. On the long tangent near Corfu, the engine was reported to have reached the preposterous speed of 112.5 mph.
On this day 19 years ago, I marked both events as part of my book, The Railroad Never Sleeps, which involved 37 photographers across North America documenting a single day in railroading. At dawn, I exposed this view of the Water Level Route at Corfu.
It seems like a world ago now.
Tracking the Light explores railroad photography !
No, this is not about television.
It was late afternoon on a Sunday in May 1984. I’d spent the day with Bob Buck & co., photographing Conrail on the old Boston & Albany.
As the day progressed we worked our way west. Bright sun gave way to dull overcast light.
Conrail was a busy railroad in those days. At Stateline Tunnel near Canaan, N.Y., we caught TV9 (TrailVan 9, Boston-Chicago), which operated on a much later schedule on Sunday’s than on weekdays.
As the train roared by with a new B36-7 in the lead, I made these photos with my old Leica IIIA and f2.0 50mm Summitar Lens.
Owing to the history of the line, Conrail operated a divided alignment at this location. A little more than four years later, Conrail abandoned the old westward main track, leaving just the former eastward main for movements in both directions. The old tunnel portal survives as vestige of the old line.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily about Railroad Photography!
In the gloom of a cloudy night, we pulled into a riverside park along the Susquehanna to listen to the peeper frogs.
Beyond the high-pitched chirps, I could hear a dull roar.
“There’s a big train coming, but it’s still a ways off.”
Minutes ticked by. The chirping remained constant, while the roar gradually grew more pronounced. It was the sound of freight cars on the move—lots of them.
My scanner squawked: “622, clear Shocks . . .”
“Loaded coal train, and getting close.” I grabbed my tripod and N6-III fitted with a 50mm f1.4 lens and in near total darkness, I set up for a photograph. As I fumbled with the level, focus, and other niceties, the headlights illuminated the right-of-way. Before the train entered the scene, I opened the shutter.
I made two photographs to record the train’s passage. The first was exposed for 20 seconds at f2.8, ISO 500. The second was made without the benefit of headlights; this one was exposed for 10 seconds at f2.8 and ISO 6400. Both were processed with DxO PureRAW 5 using DeepPRIME 3 treatment, which minimized noise and lens aberrations.
These are conceptual train photos—ghosts passing over a bridge. I knew I could do better, and soon we were following the rolling roar downriver . . .
Tracking the Light examines railroad photography!
