Ballybrophy is a rural station on Irish Rail’s Dublin-Cork main line. It’s probably the smallest community on the route to retain an active passenger station and survives as result of it being the connection to the Nenagh Branch.
Most trains blitz the place at track speed. A few miles east of the station is a summit known as the top of Ballybrophy Bank. Here a lightly used road crosses the line on a bridge which offers a nice view for Cork trains.
A Dublin-bound train led by an 071-Class flashes through Ballybrophy. What this photo can’t convey is the sound. I could hear this General Motors locomotive in full ‘run-8’ (maximum throttle) for several minutes before the train appeared into view. Powered by a 12-cylinder 645 turbocharged diesel, this machine makes a characteristic drumming sound that permeates the landscape. The sound receded as the train charged to ‘the top of Bally Bank’. Contax G2 rangefinder with 28mm Biogon lens.
I’ve made many visits to Ballybrophy over the years, both to ride the Nenagh Branch and to photograph trains on the mainline.
These images were exposed on an unusually sunny June 3, 2006 using my Contax G2 rangefinder.
The classic old stone railway station at Ballybrophy is a treasure. There’s plenty of time between trains to study the architecture. Contax G2 with 45mm lens.Freshly painted Irish Rail 215, a General Motors-built 201 class diesel, leads a Cork-bound train that has just crested ‘Bally Bank’ on its down-road run. Contax G2 with 28mm Biogon lens.
The classic old stone railway station at Ballybrophy is a treasure. There’s plenty of time between trains to study the architecture. Contax G2 with 45mm lens.
In November 2009, I was at Stucumny Bridge near Hazelhatch (west of Dublin on the Cork line) to take a look at the recently opened quad track. It was a clear evening and the sun was an orange ball hanging in the western sky.
Shortly before sunset, up and down Mark 4 trains (Dublin-Cork) passed each other making for a nice illustration of the relatively busy line. I’ve always like glint photos where trains reflect low sunlight but these are hard to execute in Ireland for a variety of reasons.
An unmodified view; Irish Rail Mark 4 trains pass on the quad track at Hazelhatch in November 2009, exposed on Fujichrome Velvia 100 slide film using a Canon EOS 3 and f2.8 200mm telephoto .
I exposed this with my Canon EOS 3 and f2.8 200mm telephoto on Fujichrome Velvia 100 slide film. (Velvia has a super-saturated color palate that tends to enhance the sunset glow).
I calculated the exposure based on the sky rather than taking an overall reading that would tend to over expose the image. Here a bit of experience working with low sun really helps.
For me the real problem with the photo is the difficult wire cutting across the middle of the frame. There may have been an angle to avoid this altogether, but with the two trains moving, I had only a few moments to release the shutter. The electrical pylons and high voltage wires in the distance don’t bother me, these are part of the scene.
Here’s the same scan of Mark 4 trains at Hazelhatch, but modified using Photoshop to effectively erase the cable cutting across the middle of the frame. This image is an experiment, and by far the exception to the rule. I very rarely alter the content of my images.
I’ve taken the liberty of making an adjusted version of the photo by using Photoshop to extract the wire. I enlarged the scan of the slide and using the ‘Healing Brush’ and ‘Clone’ tools, I effectively blended the offending wire out of the image.
This is not something I normally do. Typically, I don’t apply visual surgery to alter my photos. However, with modern tools and a sense for retouching this is not especially difficult. It’s taken me twice as long to write up this post than it took to erase the wire. You can be the judge.
