Tag Archives: Caboose

Conrail Classic: Caboose Rolls West.

June 2, 2019 brian solomon Leave a comment

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Conrail westward freight passing the old Boston & Albany station at Warren, Massachusetts. Notice the old freight house at the left. Today there’s a lot more vegetation around the railroad than back in 1984.

On April 18, 1984, I was photographing Conrail’s Boston & Albany at Warren, Massachusetts, an activity that undoubtedly coincided to a visit with my friend Bob Buck at Tucker’s Hobbies.

Early in the afternoon, I caught a westward train with three (then new) SD50s rolling by the old Boston & Albany Warren station.

This was in double-track days, when Conrail still operated train in the current of traffic in accordance with rule 251 and the long established automatic block signals that protected movements on the line.

Cabooses were still the norm on through freights, but not for much longer. Within a few months caboose-less freights would become standard practice on the B&A route and across the Conrail system.

I made this view on Kodak 5060 safety film (Panatomic-X) using my 1930s-era Leica 3A with 50mm f2.0 Summitar lens. I processed the film in the kitchen sink using Kodak Microdol-X and then made the unfortunate choice of storing the negatives in a common paper envelope, which is where they remained until last week.

Panatomic-X. Now if there was one great black & white film, that was it. Slow as molasses, but really great film. It was rated at 32 ISO (or ASA as it was called in those days) and tended to result in some thin negatives, but it gave great tonality, fine grain, and scans very well.

I’m glad I have these negatives, ignored and stored inappropriately for all these years. If only there was still a Conrail, cabooses on the roll, and Bob Buck at Tucker’s Hobbies to tell you all about it!

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Check out my selection of Conrail photos on Flicker at:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/163833022@N05/n8ua9g

photography

Nature and the Old Caboose.

July 23, 2018 brian solomon 1 Comment

This old wooden body Delaware & Hudson caboose is on display at West Barnstable, Massachusetts.

The decaying wood, peeling paint, combined with encroaching foliage and low evening sun made for some fascinating studies.

Now relics of an earlier era, cabooses were once standard equipment at the back of North American freight trains.

FujiFilm XT1 with a 18-135mm Fujinon. Exposed for light areas at the end of the caboose.

FujiFilm XT1 with a Zeiss 12mm Touit lens.

FujiFilm XT1 with a Zeiss 12mm Touit lens. Aperture set at f22 (minimum opening) to give the sun a ‘star burst’ effect. File adjusted in post processing to lighten shadow areas.

I exposed these photos using my FujiFilm XT1, using a Zeiss 12mm Touit and 18-135mm lenses. (Details in captions).

While the decay is what attracted me, I wonder if you think if this same caboose would make for more interesting photos if it was completely restored?

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Tips and Technique

Great Shot Forever Ruined—I missed the Focus.

November 26, 2016 brian solomon 2 Comments

Hard lessons. Here we have a scene never to be repeated, and one that I’ve never dared to show before. In June (or early July 1984), I caught a westward Conrail freight passing the Palmer Union Station at sunset on the then double-track Boston & Albany..

This was toward the end of regular operation of cabooses on road freights. By that time many Conrail symbol freights on the B&A were already using telemetry devices in place of the once common caboose.

A caboose rolling into the sunset. Great illustration concept. Nice light, decent framing, etc.

Except the photo is soft. Working with my Leica 3A rangefinder I’d missed the focus.

Viewed at a small size on a pixelated back-lit digital screen this old photo is nearly passable. But it fails my basic test for sharpness. Face it, I missed the focus. Like spilled milk, once you've missed the focus there's nothing you can do about it. — Viewed at a small size on a pixelated back-lit digital screen this old photo is nearly passable. But it fails my basic test for sharpness. Face it, I missed the focus. Like spilled milk, once you’ve missed the focus there’s nothing you can do about it.

And so as a result of this visual flaw, the potentially iconic image didn’t make my cut of presentable images. I filed the negative, then I misplaced it. For more than 32 years it remained unseen. I present it now only as a warning.

Even as a 17 year-old, nothing annoyed me more in my own photography than missing the focus. Back then there was no autofocus, so when I missed, I couldn’t blame the technology.

My lesson: get the focus right. Once you’ve missed it you can’t fix it. (Although with digital sharpening you can cover your tracks a little).

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photography

This is the Beginning Not the End.

June 17, 2016 brian solomon Leave a comment

So it read on one end of Conrail’s specially painted New England Division caboose.

Ironically, on this day that ‘end’ of the caboose that was facing inward toward the freight cars.

I made these photos at the end of the day at Tennyville in Palmer, Massachusetts.

The freight was Conrail’s PWSE (Providence & Worcester to Selkirk).

These were among my reticulated negatives in my lost photo file described in detail in yesterday’s post (see: Conrail-Visions from another era.) They were exposed in Spring 1984.

Conrail’s one of a kind New England Division Caboose spent a couple years on the Boston & Albany in the mid-1980s. Sometime after Division Supt E.C. Cross retired it was sent west to New York State where it became the Buffalo Division Caboose. I have more photos of it out there. Most of them sharper than these.

Interestingly, my unintentional and inept processing of the negatives resulted in producing better tonality in the sky. This was at the expense of sharpness and granular uniformity however.

Looking west at Palmer, Massachusetts in the Spring of 1984.

If you look carefully, you can spot the headlight of PWSE's headend working Palmer yard to make a pick up. — If you look carefully, you can spot the headlight of PWSE’s headend working Palmer yard to make a pick up. That’s the old Route 32 bridge over the tracks in the distance.

Interestingly, my unintentionally inept processing of the negatives resulted in producing better tonality in the sky. This was at the expense of sharpness and granular uniformity however.

For more than 30 years these negatives were stored unlabeled in a white envelope.

I scanned them last week; and using digital post-processing techniques I was able to adjust the contrast to partially compensate for the damage in processing.

©Brian Solomon 582668 — I featured this caboose in my first book on American railroad cabooses authored with John Gruber and published by MBI.

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photography, Tips and Technique

Canadian National Caboose passing Monson Semaphore.

March 21, 2015 brian solomon 2 Comments

This old upper quadrant semaphore was located in Monson, Massachusetts about a mile from the Palmer diamond. It served as a fixed distant to the absolute signal protecting the crossing and was always in the diagonal position indicating ‘approach’.

I made this image on July 20, 1986 of a northward Central Vermont freight (probably job 562).

Purists may note that Canadian National referred to its cabooses as ‘Vans’. More relevant was that by this date, cabooses were becoming unusual in New England. Conrail began caboose-less operation on through freights a few years earlier.

Exposed on July 20, 1986 using a Rolleiflex Model T with ‘Super slide’ insert to make for a roughly 645-size black & white negative.

Even rarer in New England were semaphores. Yet this one survived until very recently, when Central Vermont successor New England Central finally replaced it with a color-light. See earlier post: Monson Semaphore Challenge.

A minor point regarding this composition; I’d released the shutter a moment too soon, and so the left-hand back of the caboose visually intersects with the semaphore ladder. This annoys me. Sometimes I like a bit of visual tension in an image, but in this case it doesn’t work.

Not that I can go back and try it again, as much as I’d like to!

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Looking Back on the End of an Era—Daily Post.

March 27, 2014 brian solomon Leave a comment

Lincoln Park, Rochester, New York, January 8, 1986.

B&O GP30 works at Lincoln Park, Rochester, New York on 3:15pm January 8, 1986. Exposed with a Leica 3A rangefinder on Kodachrome 64.

It was a cold afternoon with more than a foot of fresh snow on the ground. Soft wintery sun made for directional pastel lighting, ideal for railway photography.

I found this Baltimore & Ohio local freight working sidings adjacent to Conrail’s former New York Central mainline. At the time, what interested me was the GP30 still wearing B&O blue with the classic capitol dome on the nose, and the caboose. By that date both types of equipment were getting scarce.

Technically, CSX had been the umbrella over Chessie System (the marketing name for the affiliated B&O, Chesapeake & Ohio, Western Maryland railroads) for several years. But this didn’t seem important to me. I was blissfully unaware of CSX, or that it planned to soon sell B&O’s former Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh lines to Genesee & Wyoming.

In fact, by summer, B&O operations would be conveyed to G&W’s newly created Rochester & Southern, and two years later remaining BR&P lines to G&W’s Buffalo & Pittsburgh.

Even more dramatic, in 1987 CSX would meld B&O into its new CSX Transportation; a system-wide rebranding that would soon affect all of CSX’s railroads. Ironically, one of the first locomotives I photographed in CSXT paint was a former B&O GP30!

See my new book North American Railroad Family Trees that traces corporate changes to railroading during the 20^th century. Available now from Voyageur Press!

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Tomorrow: Continuing adventures on the Ballina Branch!

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Amherst Railway Society’s Big Railroad Hobby Show part 2

January 28, 2014 brian solomon 4 Comments

More Photos from January 25, 2014.

Amherst Railway Society‘s Big Railroad Hobby Show show is pure sensory overload. Everywhere you look there’s something or someone that seizes your interest. An old friend, an F-unit, a trolley buzzing underwire, video of a steam locomotive, the sounds of trains.