#freight cars | Tracking the Light

On October 22, 1987, I made this study of former Reading Company 50-foot boxcars stored on the Genesee & Wyoming at P&L Junction in Caledonia, New York.

When Reading was folded into Conrail, Delaware & Hudson took title to a variety of Reading Company equipment, yet these cars were still painted for their original owner.

For more than 30 years this Kodachrome slide languished in the dark, and only recently did I retrieve it. These cars are of special interest to me now because I’m building a scale interpretation of the Reading Company in HO, and, Kris Sabbatino and I recently purchased models of Reading Company cars similar to these.

Exposed on Kodachrome 25 using a Leica M2 with a 90mm f2.8 Elmarit.

Scanned using a Nikon SupersCoolScan5000 digital scanner operated using VueScan software. Scan adjusted in Adobe Lightroom.

Tracking the Light Posts EVERY day.

In the title, I’m using curious as adjective to mean ‘unusual’ for alliterative effect.

Saturday, September 19, 2020, Kris Sabbatino and I briefly visited Rockland, Maine.

Years ago I’d photographed the short freight turn that brings cement from the Dragon cement works in Thomaston to a rail-barge transload on the Rockland waterfront.

I was curious if this operation was still running, so after a visit to inspect the Rockland roundhouse (still standing, still housing a locomotive), we followed the short branch that meanders through the neighborhoods down to the water.

Here we found a selection of the unusual pressurized cement cars used in the cement circuit. The wheels were shiny, so I we concluded the service still operates. Perhaps one of these days we’ll return to catch it on the move again.