Among the desirable qualities of the Rolleiflex Model T was its square format.
While in my early years of using a Rollei I tended toward overuse of the 645 Superslide insert which provided a rectangular negative. I later decided that I preferred the basic square.
In June 2001, I traveled to Germany with a Rollei T, and exposed numerous 120 rolls of black & white film.
In Leipzig, I made this image of a tram on Fuji Neopan 400. I processed this roll using a mix of Agfa Rodinal Special. Unfortunately, I slightly overprocessed the negatives, a problem easily corrected after scanning, using Adobe Lightroom to adjust contrast and shadow density. The end result offers broad tonality.
Much has changed at the summit of the Allegheny Divide in 22 years.
In the 1990s Conrail enlarged the tunnel clearances on one tunnel and added a second track while abandoning an adjacent bore. Conrail operations were conveyed to Norfolk Southern in 1999, and a new bridge was built over the tracks.
Last month on our visit to the Tunnel Inn at Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, I made a variety of photos of Norfolk Southern trains passing through the tunnel.
I thought it would be neat to pair these helper images with vintage photos of Conrail trains from approximately the same location that I made on Kodachrome 25 back in July 1989.
Conrail SD40-2s working as rear-end helpers at milepost 248 in Gallitzin, PA. July 1989.Norfolk Southern helpers, November 2021.Norfolk Southern helpers, November 2021.
We believe this was the second to last Wexford bag cement (also known as a ‘blue cement’ because of the covers on the four wheel freight wagons.)
Working with my old Contax G2 rangefinder, this was one of a series of black & white photos on Kodak Tri-XI exposed of the Irish Rail cement train on April 3, 2002.
Today, the single Bo-Bo diesel leading four-wheel wagons seems like a relic of former times.
On 3 April 2002, I traveled from Dublin to County Wexford on the morning train.
My friend and fellow railroad photographer, Hassard Stacpoole, and I were headed to Wexford town to intercept one of the last bag cement trains that was being unloaded there.
Once common, by mid-2002 Irish Rail’s bag cement runs were on the wain.
At Wicklow, our train paused in the loop to cross an up passenger train on the Dublin & Southeastern route.
Exposed on 35mm Kodak Tri-X using a Contax G2 rangefinder camera.
When our train paused at Wicklow Station made this view of a lattice-mast semaphore, which at the time was still in use to protect train movements.
I made these glint images looking west from the Railfan’s Overlook at Cassandra, Pennsylvania toward the November evening sunset.
The trick to successful glint images is correctly exposing for the highlights in order to retain sufficient detail.
Another trick is to select a ‘daylight’ white balance, rather than using an automatic white balance setting.
Westward Norfolk Southern intermodal train passes Cassandra, Pennsylvania on the West Slope of the former Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line grade over the Allegheny Divide.Helpers at the back of a westbound double stack train.
The other day I was part of a crew that ran GP35 #216 light engine from Conway Scenic Railroad’s North Conway, NH yard to milepost 64 on the former Maine Central Mountain Division.
Our mission was to clear flangeways from ice accumulation and freshly fallen snow.
Once stopped at milepost 64, I climbed down and made a few photos using my Lumix LX7.
Although the sky was a flat December gray, the scene brightened when the sun briefly emerged from a low cloud bank over the Saco River.
Conway Scenic Railroad GP35 216 has paused at milepost 64 near Glen, New Hampshire. December 2021
In the autumn, the sun swings around in the late afternoon at Cassandra, and neatly lines up with the rock cut to the west of the Railfans Overlook bridge.
Looking west at Cassandra.
We heard a westward freight approaching, so I took a position over the middle track to make for a dramatic telephoto view in the low autumn sun.
I exposed this view using my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm Z-series zoom extended to 165mm.
Although Dublin’s new LUAS tram system would not commence operations for another two years, in April 2002 the first batches of Alstom Citadis trams had already arrived.
I was invited on a tour of the Red Cow depot as a member of the Irish Railway Record Society, and made this view of tram 3013, which at the time was a ‘short’ three-section tram.
Recently I scanned this negative along with numerous other images exposed on the same roll of film. It’s amazing how much has changed over the last twenty years in Ireland.
My first visit to Horseshoe Curve, Pennsylvania was memorable. It was summer 1981; we arrived in our Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, and as we got out of the car, I could hear a westward train in the distance with the unmistakeable sound of an SD45 in the lead.
Without wasting a moment, I ran the 200 plus steps from the parking lot to the park in time to catch a Conrail 6100-series SD45 leading a freight passing the former Pennsylvania Railroad K4s Pacific that was then on display at the Curve.
Fast forward forty years. This November, Kris and visited the famous Curve on an unseasonably pleasant morning. Not long after we arrived, we heard the thunder of a climbing westward freight, and together we enjoyed its circumfrential passage up the valley.
I made these photos as the Norfolk Southern freight squeeled around the famous Horseshoe Curve.
Lumix LX7 photo at Horseshoe Curve, west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, November 2021.
Last month Kris and I booked two nights at the Tunnel Inn in Gallitzin, PA, located at milepost 248, immediately west of the tunnels below the Allegheny Divide at the summit of the old Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line.
I love Pennsylvania.
I’d made my first visit to Gallitzin on a family holiday back in the summer of 1981—40 years ago. There was no Tunnel Inn back then.
In the 1980s, my old pal TSH and I would make photos from the bridge over the line adjacent to the building that would later become the Tunnel Inn.
On arrival last month, Bob, the proprietor of the Tunnel Inn offered Kris and me a room overlooking the tracks named for the old Pennsylvania Railroad MO Tower. (The tower had controlled movements through the interlocking at Cresson, several miles to the west of Gallitzin.)
The Inn is nicely furnished and decorated inside, and there’s a nice tavern just a short walk down the road. Across the tracks is a preserved Pennsylvania Railroad N8 caboose.
Minutes after we checked in to the Tunnel Inn, the first of many Norfolk Southern trains rolled by.
In August 2003, I was traveling on the Steam Enterprise, Railway Preservation Society of Ireland’s Dublin-Belfast express led by compound 4-4-0 number 85—Merlin .
On board the train, this once-timeless scene caught my eye. Today, I wonder how much longer might passengers afford of the luxury of perusing the Sunday newspaper while traveling by rail? Or has this activity already become completely obsolete?
Less than 20 years ago, the smart phone had yet to grip the population and emerge as the chief vehicle for media and entertainment on board trains.
Kodak 120 size Tri-X, exposed manually using a Rollei Model-T, and processed in Ilfotec HC.
I scanned this black & white negative yesterday morning for presentation here. Ironically, when I exposed the photo, I expected to make prints from it, not scans.
Way back in the days of Blue, Mike Gardner and I paid a visit to Cassandra, Pennsylvania. We called into the Railfan’s Welcome Center and were given a memorable tour by the mayor of the borough, and then spent the afternoon photographing Conrail trains from the famous Overlook Bridge.
That was November 1998, and only a few months before Conrail’s class 1 operations there were to become part of Norfolk Southern.
Some 23 years later (has it really been THAT long?), Kris and I paid a visit to the same bridge.
The paint has changed. The old PRR position-light signals are gone. The trains are longer. But Cassandra is much the way I remember it back in 1998.
In 1998, I was photographing on Fujichrome with a Nikon N90S with an 80-200mm f2.8 Nikkor zoom. Last month, it was a Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm f2.8 zoom. (But many other cameras in between.)
Conrail SD50 6773 leads a heavy westward freight at Cassandra, Pennsylvania in November 1998.Looking the other way: Helpers on trailing on Conrail 6773 west at Cassandra in November 1998.November 2021; Norfolk Southern double stacks westbound at Cassandra, Pennsylvania.Westward helpers trailing at Cassandra.Eastbound stacks at Cassandra.
In July 2003, I exposed a single frame of 120 size Tri-X looking toward the old Duncormick Station on Irish Rail’s lightly used South Wexford line.
I’d processed the film in Ilfotec HC shortly after the time of exposure. The other day I scanned this photo along with other images on the roll.
Working with Adobe Lightroom 5.0, I made use of the ‘select sky’ feature under the ‘New Mask’ option (located at the righthand side of the control panel and indicated with a pixilated circle icon) to make the sunset sky more dramatic.
Previously, I would have achieved a similar effect by creating a linear gradiation mask to make my adjustments.
The advantage of the ‘select sky’ mask is that it neatly segregates the sky area from the rest of the image and allows for a cleaner adjustment while requiring less work on my part.
In this case, to make the sky appear more dramatic, I used the ‘clarity’ slider, moving to the right (+) which increases the constrast without a substantial loss of detail.
Below are both the unaltered scan of the original black & white negative, and my adjusted version. In addition, I’ve included a screenshot of hte Adobe Lightroom control panel.
Unadjusted reversed scan from the original 120-size black & white negative. This was scaled for internet presentation.Adjusted scan with ‘select sky’mask feature used to improve the sky contrast.Adobe Lightroom 5.0 control panel. Notice the position of the Clarity slide while in the ‘create new mask’ -‘select sky’ mode.
Standing at the Railfan’s Overlook at Cassandra, Pennsylvania we could hear a heavy eastward train climbing the West Slope on Norfolk Southern’s former Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line.
Kris and I had arrived at this famous photo location on our drive east from Illinois last month. It was Kris’s first time at Cassandra, and my first visit here in more than a decade.
Finally after several minutes a headlight appeared on the long tangent looking west toward Johnstown. A slow-moving loaded unit coal train was clawing up grade towards us.
As the train approached and passed us, I made this series of photos using my Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera fitted with a Z-series f2.8 70-200mm zoom lens. A pair of NS SD70ACUs were working at the back of the train.
Looking east at Cassandra as the helpers shove at the back of the eastward loaded coal train.
The wee village of Steward, Illinois is located amongst a glade of trees where the old Burlington makes a sharp bend on its westward run between Aurora and Savanna—where the line reaches the Mississippi River.
Steward is just a few miles from the busy crossing at Rochelle, where the old Burlington crosses the very busy Union Pacific former Chicago & North Western east-west line between Chicago and the Omaha/Council Bluffs gateway.
Twenty-five years ago, I’d occasionally frequent Steward to photograph trains on Burlington Northern/BNSF.
A few weeks ago on our way east, Kris and I stopped briefly in the village of Steward to photograph the preserved former Burlington station there.
This was one of the railroad’s standard pattern stations, in other words a building using a standardized floor plan that was applied to many similar structures along the company’s lines.
It appears that the building was moved both across and away from the tracks since it last had served as the company’s station building at Steward. Notice the position of the bay window on the ‘wrong’ side of the building. As built, the bay window would have been on the track-side of most station buildings.
I made these images using my Lumix LX7 digital camera.
In July 2002, my Irish friends and I paid a visit to Cornwall in the west of England, to photograph long distance passenger trains on the old Great Western Railway main line.
To make a long story short; the car we were traveling in developed a ‘fault’ at Par, which invovled a delay to our travels, and resulted in a trip on a stink buggy ( a common bus) in order to reach the railway station.
Ultimately the automobile was repaired and so we visited myriad other destinations and locations in the south western regions of England, but in the meantine we made the best of being at the station at Par.
Using my Contax G2 rangefinder, I made this view of an approaching Virgin Cross Country ‘HST’ passenger train operating approaching Par on a bright overcast morning.
I was working with Fuji Neopan 400 black & white film that I later processed using my custom tailored recipe using Agfa Rodinal Special mixed about 1 to 60 with water. If anything, these negatives are too constrasty and required some post processing adjustment using Adobe Lightroom
At the train watching platform in Rochelle, Illinois, a scanner is perpetually broadcasting railroad radio chatter.
On our brief visit there a couple of weeks back, Kris and I overheard BNSF’s dispatcher discussing with unknown parties the status of an eastward unit tank train tied down near Steward.
Armed with this knowledge we drove railroad east through the sprawing industry and cornfields toward Steward, where we found the afforementioned freight. It was crew-less and its headlight extinguished.
I made these photos with my Nikon Z6 and 70-200mm Nikkor zoom lens.
In January 1991, I traveled with Southern Pacific Dispatcher JDS to the Tehachapis in Southern California.
Working with my Leica M2 loaded with Kodak 5063 (35mm Tri-X) black & white film, I made this photo of the helpers on the back of loaded unit coal train SNTA-C (Skyline Mine to Trona, California Coal) passing the signals at Bealville.
At the time, I was experimenting with Edwal FG7, a liquid developer that yielded high-contrast and fine grain while producing a deep black.
The other day, I scanned several rolls from this trip and others to Southern California and then processed the scans with Adobe Lightroom.
Below are two versions of the same image. The top is the unadjusted scan, the bottom reflects changes to contrast and exposure aimed a producing a more pleasing image.
Kris and I visited Rochelle, Illinois two weeks ago and found this clean pair of BNSF SD40-2s in the siding east of the Union Pacific crossing. I made a few photos with my Lumix LX7 and Nikon Z6 digital cameras.
The light was dull, the landscape uninspiring, but the bright orange paint on the old diesels made for a photogenic subject.
I wonder if in my travels I had ever previously crossed paths with either of these two antique Electro-Motive diesels.
Since my first visits to the Highway F bridge over the Wisconsin Central tracks at Byron, Wisconsin in 1994, the railroad here had been functionally transformed.
In the late 1990s, two main track (both lines signalled for bi-directional operation) replaced single main track, the old signal code lines were removed, while a modern highway bridge was installed in the place of the old span.
Canadian National acquired Wisconsin Central two decades ago, and today the freight trains are significantly longer than they were 25 years ago.
It was snowing hard when Kris and I paused to watch this southward CN double stack train ascending toward the summit of Byron. I thought back to Wisconsin Central days, and scanned the comparison view from 1994 made from a similar vantage point on the old bridge.
October 29, 1994. Highway F bridge near Byron, Wisconsin.November 2021 view from approximately the same vantage point as the above photo.
Yesterday, Friday November 26, 2021, Conway Scenic began operating its annual Santa’s Holiday Express.
It was a wet & dreary debut, but well attended.
I was focused on the details of the operation; the schedule, the decorations, and the narrations.
I traveled on the first run to Conway, and made photo of Santa’s arrival.
At Conway Scenic, Santa Claus rides in the caboose.
I’ll bet S. Kip Farrington would have something to say about that!
At Conway, I made photo of Santa waving from the railroad’s vintage former Central Vermont wooden body caboose using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm Z-series zoom lens.
After exposure, I modified the NEF RAW file using Adobe Lightroom.
Wisconsin Central’s Byron Hill grade south of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin was among my favorite place to photograph trains in the mid-1990s.
A few weeks ago, Kris and I revisited a few of my old locations.
At Lost Arrow Road, we caught a southward Canadian National double stack train on its ascent of the grade.
In February 1995, I’d pictured a Wisconsin Central loaded iron ore train with then new Southern Pacific DASH9-44CWs from almost the same angle.
In the interval between the photos, the railroad has been converted from one main track to two, the grade crossing protection has been upgraded with crossing arms, and the trees have grown.
Digital photograph exposed in November 2021 using a Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm Z-series zoom.Kodachrome 25 color slide exposed using a Nikon F3T with f4.0 200mm telephoto lens. Slide scanned using an Epson V600 scanner.
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving—November 24, 2021, Conway Scenic called a work train for the Conway Branch to put up decorations for upcoming Santa’s Holiday Express Christmas themed trains.
I was on-board to assist with decorating while documenting the run. It was a perfectly clear bright sunny morning.
At Moat Brook I organized a special photo stop. At Conway we held for the regularly scheduled Valley train that was operating with RDC #23 Millie.
I made all of these photos using my Lumix LX7 digital camera.
The trappings and extras incorporated into November 14th’s Soo Line 1003 photo freight gave the whole experience a throw back feel.
In addition to period freight cars and Soo Line caboose, were some vintage automobiles posed at crossing in Burnett, Wisconsin, where a man played the roll of crossing tender.
Here I focused on the details and extras, making a few photos that appeared like those from more than six decades ago.
Often I’ve described the details of my black & white film techniques on Tracking the Light.
Today’s post features a digital photograph converted to monochrome in post processing using Adobe Lightroom.
This was a comparatively simple task. Working with the Lumix RAW file, I used the ‘Saturation’ slider control to eliminate all color from the image. Then, to increase drama and contrast, I implemened some dramatic changes using the ‘Clarity’ slider that intoduced a stark contrast curve before converting the image into the final JPG file displayed here.
Why not make this photo on film? All things being equal, I wish I had exposed a black & white negative, but in this instance I was traveling light: I kept my repitoire of cameras flexble and was working with just two digital bodies, and no film at all.
Perhaps next time, I’ll bring a single film camera with lens.
This timeless scene was made possible by the Trains Magazine steam photo charter on November 14, 2021.
I was among the dozens of photographers taking advantage of the time machine.
This was among the dozens of images I made that day using my Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera. It was snowing lightly, which added atmosphere and depth.
Soo Line 2-8-2 Mikdao 1003 with vintage photo freight at Red Cedar Road.
Last Sunday (November 14, 2021), Kris and & I caught up with the Trains Magazine steam photo charter operated with preserved Soo Line 2-8-2 Mikado 1003.
The day was cold, cloudy and snowing lightly; conditions that made for some excellent steam locomotive photography.
The charter was working on the far reaches of the Wisconsin & Southern network north of Horicon, Wisconsin.
I exposed this view using my Panasonic Lumix LX7, and processed the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom.
I was afraid that if I called this post ‘Empire Builder Part 2’ it might get lost in the shuffle.
Last Saturday (November 13, 2021) Kris and I waited for Amtrak’s westward Empire Builder at Duplainville, Wisconsin.
I wanted to catch it passing the vintage GRS Searchlights that date from the Milwaukee Road era.
Dusk is one of the most effective time to photograph searchlights.
One of the great benefits of modern digital cameras is the ability to stop the action in low light. For these photos I had the ISO set to 1600, which allowed me a 1/640th second shutter speed.
Kris and I arrived at Duplainville, Wisconsin where the Canadian National’s former Wisconsin Central crosses Canadian Pacific’s former Milwaukee Road. We were there just in time to see that the signals were cleared for an eastward train.
We got into position, post haste, to roll by Amtrak’s eastward Empire Builder—train No. 8.
Amtrak No.8, the Empire Builder rolls toward Brookfield Wisconsin.
As No. 8 blitzed by, I made these images working with my Nikon Z6 mirror-less digital camera. I processed the images in Lightroom to make the most of the NEF files recorded by the camera.
On our way west a week ago, Kris and I paused at the old New York Central hub at Elkhart, Indiana.
This brief visit coincided with the passage of Amtrak’s westward Capitol Limited that was making its station stop on the way from Washington D.C. to Chicago.
We also visited the small railroad museum located opposite Norfolk Southern’s main line from the old New York Central station, where former NYC Mohawk 3001 is a prominent static display.
Curiously, that evening when we checked into our hotel in Wisconsin, we were assigned room 3001.
I made this selection of photos using my Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera fitted with a Z-series f2.8 70-200mm zoom lens.
I walked the trail along the Lehigh River in Jim Thorpe on frosty morning last week. This trail runs parallel to Reading & Northern’s former Central Railroad of New Jersey yard.
The yard was once a sprawling sea of track largely used to marshall coal cars moving to and from area mines.
Today, the remains of the yard is primarily a base of operations for R&N’s Lehigh Scenic Gorge Railway.
At the northend of the yard, I spied this R&N SW1500, which made for an interesting subject against the autumn leaves on the hillside. I made these images with my Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera.
