Chojnów | Tracking the Light

PKP Station Chojnów.

On the morning of April 29, 2002, I was changing trains with John Gruber and M. Ross Valentine at Chojnów, Poland. We were on our way from Żagań (Zagan) to Dresden, Germany. (see earlier post: PKP Class SU45 at Sunrise, Chojnów, Poland, April 29, 2002.)

The old station at Chojnow was once a fine facility but had seen better days. The tracks, although highly polished, were tired looking and overgrown with grass, the station building was in need of fresh paint, while the platforms were crumbing and everything was covered in layers of graffiti and grime.

In other words, it made for a fascinating place to make some photos with the rising sun while waiting for a minor cross-border express train. A long electric freight had just entered the passing siding to clear the mainline.

Sunrise at Chojnów, Poland on April 29, 2002; exposed on Fujichrome with a Nikon N90S fitted with a Nikkor f2.0 135mm DC ‘defocus’ telephoto. Using narrow depth of field, my intention with this image is draw attention to the freight train on the siding in the distance, thus making for a graphic photograph with multiple points of interest. I wonder how well this works on a small computer screen; my intended audience was using a slide projector in a darkened room with the image enlarged to more than four feet across. Sometimes these images make the media transition, other times, they don’t.

In the mid-2000s, PKP reminded me a lot of Penn-Central in the1970s.

In my travels around Poland, I’d photographed many stations and lines in various states of functional decay; a tenuous state. When a railway reaches such a condition, it will either vanish altogether, or find itself ripe for investment. In either case, it will be forever changed.

Sunrise at Chojnów, Poland on April 29, 2002; exposed on Fujichrome with a Nikon N90S fitted with a Nikkor f2.0 135mm DC ‘defocus’ telephoto.

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Early Morning Sun on a Classic Diesel.

In April 2002, I was on my way from Zagan, Poland to Dresden, Germany with John Gruber and some other friends. Shortly after sunrise, we changed trains at Chojnów, where rich low sun allowed for some dramatic images of PKP (Polish National Railways) trains. PKP was operating a variety of interesting locomotives, and I’m partial to the distinctive shape of the SU45 diesel.

Polish diesel locomotive. — Exposed with my Nikon F3T fitted with Nikkor 24mm lens on Fujichrome slide film.

My journal entry at Chojnów made at 6:34 am on that day includes this observation: “We awoke at 3:30 am to catch the 4:49 am [train] from Zagan—beautiful morning light [at Chojnów], but the station is decayed and graffiti covered.”

After I made this photo, we boarded a train destined for Gorlitz (and Dresden). Breakfast in the WARS dining car was memorable: “The girl at the counter cooked us scrambled eggs in a frying pan—class act!”

Exposed with my Nikon F3T fitted with Nikkor 24mm lens on Fujichrome slide film.