Earlier this month, I exposed these three views of Pan Am Southern’s autorack train 287 working westward at Buckland, Massachusetts on the old Boston & Maine Fitchburg route.
The color view is a digital photo made with my FujiFilm XT1. This is Jpg using the in-camera Velvia color profile, which I scaled for presentation here, but otherwise left it unmodified in regards to color, contrast, saturation etc.
The black & white photographs are film images, exposed with a Leica IIIA fitted with a 1940s-vintage Nikkor screw mount 35mm lens. I used Ilford Pan F (ISO 50) processed in D76 (1 to 1 with water) and toned in selenium for improved highlights.
Telephoto view made digitally with a FujiFilm XT.Wide-angle view exposed on black & white film.No locomotive in this black & white photo. Is it always important to feature the locomotives?
I like to work with multiple cameras. I have my favorite of the three photos. Do you have your favorites?
Tracking the Light is Brian Solomon’s daily blog focused on the nuts and bolts of Railway Photography.
Today’s post explores the former Boston & Maine yard at Shelburne Falls (technically Buckland, but I’ll let the pundits argue that privately), now home to the modest Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum. See: http://sftm.org
Last week Mike Gardner visited the site to make photographs of Pan Am Railway’s eastward autorack train symbol 28N. While waiting, I exposed a few views of the disused yard tracks parallel to the old Boston & Maine, now Pan Am, mainline.
Kodak Tri-X processed in Ilford Perceptol 1-1 with water for 8 minutes at 70F, then toned in Selenium for 7 minutes. Negatives rinsed, washed, dried and scanned in color using an Epson V750 Pro.
Pan Am Southern symbol freight 28N at Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.
Tracking the Light posts something different every day!
In staying with the spirit of the season, I offer these views exposed last week of a discharged ethanol train, Pan Am Railways/Norfolk Southern symbol 67N, passing a pumpkin field at Buckland, Massachusetts. (Plus an earlier image at East Deerfield, see below).
The movement of unit ethanol trains via the former Boston & Maine routing is a relatively recent change in New England railroading.
For several years unit ethanol trains to the Providence & Worcester have used routings via either CSXT or CP-Vermont Rail System-New England Central. The construction of improved connections between Pan Am Railways/Pan Am Southern and the Providence & Worcester at the Gardner, Massachusetts yard, have allowed Pan Am via NS to emerge as a preferred New England ethanol route.
I’ve known about this for a few months, yet I was taken by surprise when the westward empty ethanol train appeared at East Deerfield Yard, just a few minutes behind a POED (Portland to East Deerfield) carload freight that I’d been following.
Surprise! What’s this? How about 67N, the discharged unit ethanol train rolling west at East Deerfield.
So often, locations along the old B&M offer only a very limited view of the train.
This pumpkin field, near the old Buckland station, offered a good place to put the unit train in perspective. I wanted to show as much of the train as practicable and in a New England setting.
Buckland, Massachusetts. I adjusted the contrast, saturation and color temperature in Lightroom to more closely resemble the scene as I saw it.This view required a variety of subtle adjustments in post processing. In addition to warming the color temperature, I used a digitally applied gradated neutral density filter to retain sky detail and color while making over-all adjustments to saturation and contrast. I hope this makes for a better balanced scene, but every computer screen (and all sets of eyes) interpret images differently, so what looks balanced to me, might look odd to someone else. What do you think?
Photos exposed with a FujiFilm X-T1 with 18-135mm lens.
