B23-7 | Tracking the Light

Here’s another gem from my Conrail files. I have tens of thousands of Conrail photos, many of them exposed in black & white.

This image caught my eye. November 1984 was a busy month photographically, and I exposed almost all my photographs that month with an old Leica 3A. (My original camera had suffered a failure, so I was using one of my dad’s.)

This was exposed mid-month, probably on a Saturday. I was traveling with some friends. We’d seen Conrail PWSE (Providence & Worcester to Selkirk, New York) working the old Boston & Albany yard in Palmer, and were heading west to find a location.

The train got the jump on us, and there was a panic as we saw the train racing west behind us: “There it is!” I made this grab shot looking down the road at North Wilbraham toward one of the few grade crossings on the B&A route west of Worcester, Massachusetts.

Conrail PWSE races across the grade crossing at North Wilbraham, Massachusetts in November 1984. Exposed on 35mm black & white film using a Leica 3A with 50mm Summicron. Photo cropped to eliminate unnecessary foreground. — Conrail PWSE races across the grade crossing at North Wilbraham, Massachusetts in November 1984. Exposed on 35mm black & white film using a Leica 3A with 50mm Summitar. Photo cropped to eliminate unnecessary foreground. Notice my careful placement of the locomotives in relation to the trees and poles.

For me this captures the scene. North Wilbraham isn’t the most salubrious environment, but so what? Not every place is a park and it shows the way things were in the mid-1980s. I can hear ‘The Cars’ (Boston band) playing on the radio.

Need a close up of Conrail’s B23-7s? I have lots of those too.

Now wouldn’t this have been a cool angle 40 years earlier with one of Boston & Albany’s class A1 Berkshires hauling freight under a plume of its own exhaust?

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January 3, 1989.

The old New York Central Mohawk Division is an enigmatic stretch of railroad. It’s very old. It has lots of history. It passes through some stunning scenery. It carries lots of traffic. And it can be really difficult to photograph.

Access to the line is limited, elevation is often in the wrong places, and trains seem to run in the wrong direction or at the wrong times. Or, following holidays, it seems that trains are absent altogether. Yet, when driving the New York State Thruway, it seems that every time you look across at the tracks there’s a train racing along.

On this day, I was driving west under sunny skies. I joined the Mohawk at Amsterdam, New York where I found Conrail B23-7 1999 working a local freight—hard out of the morning sun. A blanket of lake effect snow covered the ground. Hmm.

Very little else was moving, but I caught one of Amtrak’s Empire Corridor trains at Fonda. Then took my time to explore locations.

At Little Falls, I again caught up with this Conrail B23-7. At the time it was the booby prize, but I’m glad I took the time to make photographs.