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Killer Combo—Super Angulon and Pan-X

May 13, 1984: I was four weeks away from graduating high school. On that day I traveled with Bob Buck and met friends on the ‘B&A West End’ (Conrail’s former Boston & Albany climb over Washington Hill).

At Middlefield, Massachusetts the deep chug of big General Electric diesels alerted us to a westward freight.

Working with my Leica IIIA fitted with my dad’s 21mm Super Anglon, I exposed this series of black & white photos.

The Super Angulon was a favorite lens, but best used judiciously. Another key to the success of these photos was my film choice : Kodak’s Panatomic-X.

Rated at ISO 32, this super fine grain black & white emulsion offered super sharp images and wonderful tonality. The difficulty was its slow speed. It was really only practical on very bright days.

Looking back at my many photos made in the early 1980s, I wish I’d used Panatomic-X more often, rather than my preferred film of time: Kodak Tri-X (rated at ISO 400). If I’d had the resources, I sould have had multiple cameras with different types of film in each. Oh wait . . . I think I had another camera that day . . . and it was loaded with Kodak Ektachrome 200.

Those slides are for another post on another day.

Conrail had just ten GE C30-7s, locomotives 6600-6609, and in the the 1980s these were often assigned to the Boston Line. In mid-1984, the railroad began receiving its order for fifty C30-7As. Where the C30-7s had 16 cylinder engine that feature a louder heavier sound, the C30-7As, used a 12-cyldiner engine, and I believe were fitted with more effective sound emissions controls, which muted the sounds of their exhaust. The three C30-7s working this heavy westbound shook the earth at Middlefield that morning nearly 42 years ago!

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Milepost 129—August 1982

In August 1982, Bob Buck of Tucker’s Hobbies in Warren, Massachusetts brought Doug Moore, John Conn and me on a memorable Boston & Albany West End tour.

We started at Westfield and worked our way across the railroad, making it all the way to Amtrak’s Albany-Rensselaer station.

It was my first experience photographing Washington Hill—B&A’s big grade over the Berkshires.

We caught several Conrail freights, including one that we chased from Pittsfield east up toward Dalton.

Earlier in the trip, Bob drove us in his green Ford van along the right of way of the third track to Middlefield Station. When we reached milepost 129, we inspected one of the remaining 1830s-era stone arch bridges.

Here I made this view looking eastbound to show the GRS search light signal. Among the quirks of New York Central-era signaling was displaying a staggered ‘green over green’ for ‘clear’ on intermediate automatic block signals in graded territory. ABS Signals on the B&A Westend grades were continuously lit, while those on the East End tended to be approached lit.

You can see Bob at the wheel of his van.

I wasn’t good a picking my exposures and this frame of Kodachrome 64 was a full stop underexposed (too dark). For years this image was in my ‘3rds file’ (junk), but with modern scanning technology and Adobe Lightroom, I was able to make the image presentable again.

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Conrail at Warren, Massachusetts.

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Today’s photo is in honor of my late-friend, Robert A. Buck of Warren, Massachusetts, who would have turned 91 today (October 12, 2020).

In the 1940s, Bob Buck made priceless photos of New York Central’s Boston & Albany around Warren, and elsewhere across the railroad. For most of his life he ran Tucker’s Hardware, later Tucker’s Hobbies in Warren, which was a gathering point for those interested in railroads.

On December 6, 1992, I exposed this photo of an eastward Conrail freight, probably SEPW (Selkirk to Providence & Worcester RR) climbing through Warren behind six General Electric B23-7s.

I had Kodachrome 25 film loaded in my Nikon F3T and I used a 35mm PC (Perspective Control) lens, all neatly leveled out on a Bogen 3021 tripod with ball head.

The pronounced chugging of multiple FDL diesel engines powering these locomotives as they ascended the grade through Warren would have announced the approach of the freight several minutes before the headlight appeared west of the old Warren Station.

The making of this image would have coincided with one of my countless visits to Tucker’s Hobbies in the 1980s and 1990s.

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