Here’s another of my photos at dusk from our pursuit of St. Lawrence & Atlantic’s westward freight 393 last week. Kris and I were positioned along the south shore of the Reflection Pond near Gorham, NH.
My tripod was occupied holding my Canon EOS-3 during a 30 second time exposure. This film photo remains latent at this writing.
While the Canon was exposing film, I made a few hand held photos with my FujiFilm XT1 fitted with a Zeiss 12mm Touit with the ISO set at 5,000.
These are two of the 1/2 second exposures that night.
I adjusted the Fuji RAW files using Adobe Lightroom.
During the course of last weekend’s special Railfan Photo Freight hosted by the Conway Scenic Railroad, I made several hundred images of the train and its preparation.
Today, I’m just getting through the editing of these images.
Today, I offer this selection, all exposed using my FujiFilm XT1 with 16-55mm lens.
Conway, NH.View from the head end working west near Bartlett, NH.Run by at Second Iron, west of Bartlett, NH.Looking west near Cobb Farm Road.
I converted my Fuji RAW files using Iridient X-Transformer and made adjustments to color and contrast using Adobe Lightroom. When I make contrast adjustments, I generally use the ‘highlights’, ‘shadows’, and ‘contrast’ slider controls.
Two years ago I made my first trip to Crawford Notch by road in 20 years.
I was on my way to the Conway Scenic Railroad at North Conway to write an article for Trains Magazine.
One thing led to another, and two years later Crawford is now a regular place on my visit list! I was up there again yesterday in HyRail truck TC-205 as part of a bridge inspection with Wayne Duffett of TEC Associates .
This photo was exposed on May 29, 2019 using my FujiFilm XT1 with a Zeiss 12mm Touit. I’ve posted two versions, one more saturated than the other.
Sunday, January 24, 2021, on the drive back to the White Mountains, we diverted to the old Boston & Maine yard at East Deerfield, Massachusetts.
It was my most recent visit to this hallowed ground of New England railroading, a place where I’ve photographed countless hundreds of trains over the last four decades.
It was Kris Sabbatino’s first visit.
Winter evening light made for some wonderful photographs.
These images were exposed using my FujiFilm XT1 with 16-55mm lens using the Velvia color profile. Other than scaling for internet presentation, I made no alternations to the camera Jpgs.
Last Sunday (January 10, 2021), Kris Sabbatino and I drove north into Maine to the narrow crossing of the mountains called Grafton Notch.
In my opinion, this is the coolest of the ‘Notches’ in the White Mountain region.
At Moose Cave a stream navigates a narrow cleft in the rocks where ice had formed.
I made this sequence of photos using my FujiFilm XT1 with 16-55 mm lens, converting camera RAW files with Iridient X-Transformer and making adjustments to color, contrast and exposure using Adobe Lightroom.
During the last week, Maine Central GP38 252 has been working Conway Scenic Railroad’s Valley trains that run daily from North Conway railroad east to Conway and North Conway railroad west to Bartlett.
While 252 is more than capable of working these trains, it is typically been assigned to the run to Crawford Notch.
I took the opportunity to make photos of 252 working the 1910-1920s-era heavy steel cars that comprise our Valley train set.
These photos were made using a FujiFilm XT1 with 18-135mm lens.
Today is 4 October 2018, I’ve just down loaded images of my train directly from my Fuji XT1 to my iPhone using camera enabled WIFI and Fuji software uploaded to the phone.
Yesterday, 29 September 2018, I made these views of a LUAS Green Line tram wearing the latest fully covered advertising livery as it worked up Dawson Street in Dublin on its way to Broombridge.
September often brings sunny days in Ireland, and yesterday was a fine afternoon to make a few photos.
This encounter with the colourful tram was fortuitous, rather than planned, as I was on a shopping mission and photography was a secondary activity.
Photo adjusted from the camera RAW in post processing.
All the images were exposed using my FujiFilm XT1 with 18-135mm zoom lens.
I’ve been unusually fortunate to catch Irish Rail’s 071 almost everyday for the last couple of weeks.
This locomotive is the class leader and features a heritage livery based on the as-delivered General Motors scheme.
It is very popular with photographers.
On Saturday 22 September 2018, locomotive 071 worked the Belmond Grand Hibernian cruise train from Dublin Heuston to Connolly Station. Until yesterday, it had been assigned to the Dublin-Ballina IWT Liner container train.
To make this view, I used my FujiFilm XT1 fitted with a Zeiss Touit 12mm lens. To help bring in sky detail, I attached a Lee 0.9 graduated neutral density filter (a physical filter), then made further adjustment to RAW files in post processing using a digitally applied graduated neutral density filter, which allowed me to make adjustments to highlight and shadow detail.
Additional adjustments were made globally (the entire image) to modify contrast and colour saturation to improve the appearance of the photograph.
A view from Dublin’s Conyngham Road above the south portal of the Phoenix Park Tunnel on the branch that runs from Islandbridge Junction toward Connolly Station.
Thanks to Paul Maguire for lending me an SD card! (I’d left mine in the computer, and the spare on my desk, and the second spare in my other bag! Poor show on my part.)
In the 1950s and 1960s, My father made a project of photographing the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee, the distinctive interurban electric line connecting it’s namesakes.
Last month, John Gruber and I paid a visit to the Illinois Railway Museum at Union, Illinois. Like my father, John had focused on the North Shore. He made hundreds of excellent photographs that distilled the spirit of the railway.
North Shore was before my time, but I feel that I know the line thanks to my dad’s and John’s photographs, which were featured in books by the late William D. Middleton.
The railway may be gone 55 years, but key pieces of it’s equipment survive.
I made these digital views of preserved North Shore cars at IRM using my FujiFIlm X-T1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit lens. This flat-field super wide-angle lens is well suited to making images in the tight quarters of IRM’s car barns.
John Gruber has an on-going exhibit of his finest North Shore photography in the East Union Station at IRM. This will be subject of another Tracking the Light post.
Here’s a thoroughly today scene: An Amtrak Midwest Siemens Charger at Milwaukee’s Intermodal Terminal.
Diffused afternoon sun works well with the geometry of the station’s architecture and the curves and lines of the Siemens Charger.
Using my FujiFilm X-T1 fitted with a 12mm Zeiss Touit, I opted for a skewed angle that accentuates this modern scene. In post processing, I adjusted contrast and color balance.
Reading the signals is part of the challenge and joy of my railroad photography.
Three weeks back, Chris Guss and I were following a southward Canadian National freight on the Wisconsin Central line.
North of Slinger, we made photos from a wooden plank bridge near the north approach signal for Slinger, Wisconsin.
This displayed ‘green over red’, in other words a clear aspect.
Clear signal at the north approach for Slinger.
I made these views with my Fujifilm XT1. After exposing the view of the signal, I changed lenses, and used a 27mm pancake lens for the action photo of the passing train.
Canadian National 2813 leads freight M342-41-30 south near Slinger, Wisconsin.
Heavy rain had given the ground a lacquer-like gloss.
Chris Guss and I had arrived at Sturtevant, Wisconsin to roll by an Amtrak train. (Featured the other day in: FIRST ENCOUNTER: AMTRAK CHARGER.
While waiting for the northward train. I made a series of photographs of Amtrak’s relatively new Sturtevant station. I’ve always liked the effect of a twilight sky, when the blue light of evening nearly matches the intensity of electric lighting.
Fujifilm XT1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit at ISO 2000.
greater color saturation and contrast applied in post processing.
Here, I worked with my Zeiss 12mm Touit lens. This is flat-field lens, so keeping the lens level, minimizes perspective distortion.
I was without my small tripod, and I used the camera handheld at a low angle. To make use of the reflections of the station in the parking lot.
I set the ISO to 2000. Here are two post-processing variations of the Camera RAW file that feature different contrast curves.
I was curious to experience one of these new locomotives.
The Siemens-built Charger is powered by a Cummins diesel and has a European appearance.
Among their Amtrak assignments is the Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha corridor.
I waited on the platform at the new Sturtevant, Wisconsin station. The eerie blue glow of the locomotive’s LED headlights could be seen reflecting off the rails long before the train arrived at the station.
Working with my FujiFilm XT1 fitted with a Zeiss 12mm Touit, I set the ISO to 6400 and panned the train arriving at 1/30thof a second at f2.8.
To better balance the color and keep contrast under control, I modified the camera RAW file in Lightroom to produce this internet suitable JPG.
Here’s a screen shot of the camera-produced JPG with EXIF data for comparison.
Gosh, I remember when 6798 was NEW and blue. This is among Conrail-era SD60Ms still at work on Norfolk Southern.
To make for a more dramatic locomotive action photo, I’ve taken a low angle medium-telephoto view.
Notice how the angle features the wheels on rails, allowing you to see below the locomotive.
Engine exhaust blurs the wires beyond, demonstrating the engines are working.
By focusing on the locomotives; I’ve cropped most of the following freight, more than a mile of it in tow.
Exposed at LaPorte, Indiana on Norfolk Southern’s former New York Central Water Level Route mainline. FujiFilm XT1 with 90mm telephoto. ISO 200, f5, 1/500thsecond; JPG image processed from camera RAW file using Lightroom; contrast and exposure adjusted globally and locally to improve visual impact.
Saturday evening I used my FujiFilm X-T1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit to photograph CSX’s westward Q437 (Framingham, Massachusetts to Selkirk, New York) at Palmer, Massachusetts passing the new signals at CP83.
They’ve yet to be activated and the new signals are in place alongside the Conrail-era signals installed in 1986.
It was dusk and the light was fading fast. I pushed the camera ISO to 2500, and exposed this action shot at 1/250th of a second at f2.8.
With photographer Mike Gardner behind the wheel, we were in hot pursuit of Pan Am’s EDRJ (East Deerfield to Rotterdam Junction).
Rolling along with the train at the Vermont-New York state line west of Pownal, Vermont, I made this pacing view.
There’s wasn’t time for niceties such as carefully calculating exposure. I set the camera shutter speed dial to ‘A’ and exposed a burst of images in RAW.
After the fact I adjusted shadows and highlights in Lightroom to make for a better balanced photograph.
Rices at Charlemont, Massachusetts used to be an interlocking, where the Boston & Maine’s line went from double to single track.
Back in the 1980s, I’d catch meets here between eastward and westward freights.
Much has changed.
Not only was the interlocking decommissioned and later removed, but almost all evidence of it, including the old signal bridge are now gone. Trees and brush have grown up between the railroad and the river, and trees along the road are taller than ever.
This now makes for a pretty challenging setting.
At some point I’ll present ‘then and now’ views, but these photos demonstrate telephoto and wide angle photos of the same train from the same vantage point.
There was nice afternoon light on Pan Am’s EDRJ (East Deerfield to Rotterdam Junction) so I settled on my traditional location, which still gets a bit of sun late in the day.
