photography

Southern Pacific on the West Valley

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.

Although 31 years after I made this image, the subject matter resonates with me more than ever, in my opinion, I released the shutter just a moment too soon. I wish I’d centered the locomotive between the signals.
Looking timetable East at Delavan, California. I also made a color slide at this location when the freight got closer.

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