Tag Archives: #Budd RDC

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RDCs at Springfield Station-41 Years Ago.

My post on February 9th, featuring a Reading & Northern Budd RDC, inspired me to located similar views that I made on black & film of Amtrak RDCs on the Springfield-Hartford-New Haven route.

Among the photos I found among my old negative were these views at Springfield Union Station (Massachusetts) of Amtrak’s RDC-2s 34 and 36 idling between runs on February 15, 1985.

Working with a Leica 3A rangefinder, I’d made these photos on Ilford FP4. I processsed the film in Kodak D-76, and then filed the negatives away.

At the time, there was nothing remarkble about this scene. Today, the photos make for a trip down memory lane. Years after I made this photo, a former boss advised me; “When you look around you can see the flowers or the garbage, it is your choice.” In these photos, I see RDCs in what had been a favorite place to make railroad photographs.

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Millie Trip-Second Edit

When you make a lot of photos it is crucial to review and edit the images to select the most appropriate photos for presentation.

But what are the most appropriate images? I’ve often found that my second review of a batch of images will reveal a more interesting selection than the first edit.

The day of our special trip on RDC Millie for our wedding guests, I’d forgotten to pack my SD card reader. However, since my brother lent me a clever device I was able download selected photos from my Panasonic Lumix LX7’s SD card directly to my Apple iPhone. I posted a few of those images on Sunday.

Last night, while recovering from Sunday’s celebrations, I had the time to download and review all of the photos from Saturday’s trip and make the most of them.

Below is my ‘second edit’ from Saturday, September 17th, 2022.

Sanford, Florida reunion gang.
Richard Jay Solomon holds up the signed copy of my latest book.
Chris Guss shows off his drone at Moat Brook.
Conductor Rob Flannigan and Mass Bay RRE’s Dave Brown.
Millie at the Swift River Bridge.
Photographers on the platform at North Conway, NH.
Family and friends on the platform at North Conway, NH.

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Evening Light on an FL9 and an RDC

Last week was warm with sunny skies. Unseasonably warm.

One evening while exploring Cape Cod, Kris Sabbatino and I paid a visit to the Cape Cod Central at Hyannis where I made these views of a former New Haven Railroad FL9 (painted to resemble its as-delivered appearance) and an old RDC built for Boston & Maine.

In an earlier Tracking the Light post, I speculated if Conway Scenic Railroad’s former New Haven Railroad RDC 23 Millie ever visited the NHRR line that once extended to Provincetown.

So far my investigations have determined that while NHRR 23 almost certainly visited the New Haven stations at Hyannis and Woods Hole, which were regular destinations for NHRR’s RDC runs, it is far less likely that it strayed as far as Provincetown, because NHRR RDCs rarely went that far.

In a similar line of inquiry: did the former B&M car pictured here ever work Boston & Maine’s North Conway Branch? Many of B&M’s cars had visited North Conway over the years, and some even worked over Crawford Notch!

I’m curious to know more.

Exposed digitally using a Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera and processed with Adobe Lightroom.

Exposed digitally using a Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera and processed with Adobe Lightroom.

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Spring at the Swift River Truss; Focus, Perspective and Composition—Four photos.

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Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time studying railway imagery, observing and analyzing hundreds of thousands of individual photos.

Among the most striking are the works of Japanese photographers.

Some of their most successful photos cleverly use focus and depth of field to place the railway in its environment. In some situations this is accomplished with a single image; in others with a sequence of photos.

Last week, I emulatted the style embraced by my Japanese counterparts to produce this sequence of images at the Swift River Bridge on Conway Scenic Railroad’s Conway Branch.

Here I’m working with three primary subjects; the truss bridge, Budd rail diesel car Millie and a flowering tree. All were exposed digitally using my FujiFilm XT1 with 18-135mm zoom lens.

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