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 18-135mm lens.FujiFilm XT1 with 18-135mm lens.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?
Back in the mid-1980s, my friends and I made trips to Mechanicville, New York where the adjacent Boston & Maine and Delaware & Hudson yards lent to lots of action and a great variety of diesel locomotives.
The yard was an early casualty of Guilford’s short lived consolidation of B&M and D&H operations. By 1986 the yard was a ghost town.
In more recent times a small portion of the yards were redeveloped for intermodal and auto-rack facilities, but very little of the sprawling trackage remains
In December, I returned to Mechanicville with a Leica IIIA and Sumitar loaded with Kodak Tri-X in an effort to recreate the angles of photos I exposed in November 1984 using the same camera/film combination.
To aid this exercise, I scanned my old negatives and uploaded these to my iPhone. The viewfinder of the Leica IIIA presents difficulties as this is just a tiny window and not well suited to precision composition. (Topic for another day).
Also complicating my comparisons was the fresh layer of snow in the 2017 views.
In some places the only points of reference between ‘then’ and ‘now’ views are the electrical lines crossing the yard.
Horizontal view from November 24, 1984. An eastward B&M freight is about to cross the diamond with Maine Central 252 in the lead.Nearly the same angle in December 29, 2017.November 24, 1984.December 29, 2017 at the same location.Delaware & Hudson C-420 406 crossed Viall Avenue in Mechanicville, New York on November 24, 1984.Looking east at Viall Avenue on December 29, 2017. Note the change of grade crossing signals.
I’d spent November 24, 1984 with some friends exploring railroads in the Albany area.
Delaware & Hudson had recently been included in the Guilford network and its operations were being melded with Boston & Maine. At the time, D&H still had a lot of old Alco diesels.
We had stopped by Mechanicville earlier in the day, and I made a selection of photos (that I’ll post at a later date) then we drove via Schenectady to Rotterdam Junction to photograph Conrail.
On the way back east, we made another visit to Mechanicville, when I exposed this twilight view. This is an evocative image that represents a symbolic twilight as well as a literal one.
Exposed with a Leica 3A on Kodak Tri-X, processed in Kodak D76 1-1.
It was twilight for the D&H Alcos; twilight for the old Mechanicville Yard; and twilight of the brief colorful and busy era on Guilford before a series of strikes changed everything.
New York State’s Battenkill Railroad is a throwback to another time. It is best known for its ancient Alco RS-3 diesels, a once common model, now virtually extinct.
However, the railway’s rustic charm comes from its old stations, rolling jointed rail, and old-school agricultural landscapes.
Last week, Mike Gardner and I explored the line, working north from the interchange at Eagle Bridge.
In the foreground are Battenkill’s tracks at Eagle Bridge, New York, while Pan Am Southern’s Boston & Maine tracks and signals are at the next crossing.Shushan, New York.Beaded grade crossing signs, once standard, are now relics.Lonely tracks that only see one or two trains a week.This old Alco is still lettered fro Battenkill’s predecessor, Greenwich & Johnsonville.I’ve panned this Alco RS-3 to convey a sense of motion.
I made these views with my Nikon F3 on Ilford HP5 black & white film. Railroads like this are rare in 2017. I wonder how much longer it will survive in its present condition?
It was my second visit to Eagle Bridge, New York inside a week.
On this visit, We’d driven here on spec looking for Pan Am’s EDRJ (East Deerfield to Rotterdam Junction). No luck with that this time, but on arrival I’d noted that there were loaded grain cars on the interchange for the Battenkill Railroad.
So what?
Well, the Battenkill is known to run on weekdays; this was a Friday, its interchange had been delivered, but as of 1:30pm the Battenkill hadn’t come down to collect it yet.
The Battenkill’s primary attraction is its continued operation of vintage Alco RS-3 diesels. While the RS-3 was among the most common types built in the 1950s, only a scant few survive in traffic today outside of museums. (Perhaps a reader can supply a list?).
Photographer Paul Goewey, who was traveling with me, looked up the Battenkill’s radio information on his smart phone.
“We’ll go up the line and see if we can find the BK.”
So we drove ten yards and over the grade crossing near the old station and . . .
“There he is!”
That was easy, now wasn’t it?
Battenkill’s old RS-3 chortles its way up the interchange tracks. On the right is the old Boston & Maine station at Eagle Bridge, New York. Exposed on Ilford HP5 using a Leica 3A with Nikkor 35mm lens. Film processed using a two bath HC110 developer mix in a Jobo processing machine.Digital image at Eagle Bridge exposed with a FujiFilm X-T1 with 18-135mm lens.Battenkill collects part of its interchange. The B&M station is directly at my back.Alco diesels are famous for their exhaust. Note the nicely tamped track.Looks like someone came prepared for the day! I exposed this with my Leica 3A on HP5 (processed as described above. By using a two bath developer I was able to optimize the film’s shadow and highlight detail).Battenkill’s former Delaware & Hudson RS-3 is still lettered for the Greenwich & Johnsonville, a shoreline that operated the route prior to Battenkill.I thought I’d try a low angle.Now there’s some Alco exhaust!
Battenkill runs as required but Tracking the Light Runs Daily.
General Motors Electro-Motive Division SD40-2 is classic North American locomotive design. This rugged, powerful, and reliable model was built in the thousands between 1972 and the early 1980s. Its essential boxy utilitarian form shares the same functional appearance common to most of EMD’s American road-freight locomotives built from 1963 until the general proliferation of Safety-Cab designs in the early 1990s. Canadian Pacific ordered large numbers of SD40 and SD40-2s from General Motors Canadian subsidiary and these were its dominant road locomotive for the better part of two decades. In the early 2000s, they remained standard on CP’s Delaware & Hudson lines in New York and Pennsylvania.
Canadian Pacific’s classic 1970s ‘Pac-Man’ icon on the rear hood of SD40-2 5952. Exposed with a Nikon F3 fitted with f2.0 135mm lens. Fujichrome Astia 100F slide film.
On October 12, 2003, I made a series of photographs of Canadian Pacific SD40-2s on a southward/westward freight at Delaware & Hudson’s Bevier Street Yard in Binghamton, New York. Here the locomotives were paused in nice light giving ample opportunity to make photographs from different angles. I was working with a pair of Nikon F3s (one F3HP, one F3T), and a Contax G2 rangefinder fitted with an unusual super wide-angle lens. Displayed here are a few of my results. The broadside Contax view at the bottom of the post was among the images featured in my recently published North American Locomotives by Voyageur Press.
Canadian Pacific’s classic 1970s ‘Pac-Man’ icon on the rear hood of SD40-2 5952. Exposed with a Nikon F3 fitted with f1.8 105mm lens.Broad side view of Canadian Pacific SD40-2 6007 at Bevier Street Yard in Binghamton, New York. Exposed with a Contax G2 rangefinder with 16mm Hologon lens. (This is a flat field design to obviate barrel distortion).
