Tag Archives: #1980s

photography

Old View of Old East Deerfield Railfan’s Bridge.

On the morning of June 29, 1985, I exposed this black & white photo of the McClelland Farm Road bridge over Boston & Maine’s East Deerfield Yard.

This is the famed ‘Railfan’s Bridge’, which was then a very popular place to make photos and watch trains.

Over the years on Tracking the Light I’ve featured many views of this bridge and its replacement being built.

Exposed using a Rolleiflex Model T with 75mm f3.5 Zeiss Tessar on Kodak Professional 120 Tri-X (rated at ISO 320) using a 645-sized ‘super slide insert’.

I processed the film in Kodak D76, and yesterday I scanned the now 34 year old negative using an Epson V600 flatbed scanner.

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photography

Four Views from the New Haven Line—1980.

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When I was young, my brother and I would take the train from Springfield or Hartford to visit my grandparents in the Bronx. Starting in 1977, I’d always carry my vintage Leica 3A fitted with 50mm Summitar lens and loaded with Kodak black & white film.

We typically traveled on an Amtrak Budd RDC or SPV-2000 self-propelled railcar to New Haven, where we would change for a through train to either Rye, New York or Grand Central. My parents would buy us tickets and I’d usually take care of the travel logistics.

I don’t recall the specifics of this trip. These images were on an isolated strip of negatives stored in a glassine negative envelop with only ‘1980, Amtrak/C-Dot New Haven Line’ to identify it.

C-dot train at Bridgeport, Connecticut.
New SPV-2000 on the Danbury Branch at South Norwalk, Connecticut.
New SPV-2000 on the Danbury Branch at South Norwalk, Connecticut.
Stamford, Connecticut

I doubt that I was photographing through the glass—If you know what I mean.

I would have processed the film in the sink at home in Massachusetts using Kodak Microdol-X developer.

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Fordham Road in THe Bronx—Looking back.

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Another two black & white photos from the depths of my archive.

These scenes were captured with my old Leica 3A nearly 40 years ago.

Technically they aren’t great photos. But these distilled what I saw in the Bronx.

Fordam Road at Webster Avenue in the Bronx, circa 1980.

The view inside the Forham Road subway station was made when we were on our way downtown—to Manhattan. Can you hear the roar of the train as it approaches? I can.

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