Tag Archives: #Groveton

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Rescued Photo from the Archive

On October 4, 1993, I paid a visit to Groveton, NH to photograph this NHV GP9 working trackage around the old paper mill.

It was a dark morning, so I was working with Kodak E100 LPP Ektachrome that was rated at ISO 100, two stops faster than my staple color film: Kodachrome 25.

Despite the faster film, I badly miscalculated exposure and the resulting color slide was too dark for presentation. For more than 30 years, it sat in a Kodak box labeled ‘Seconds’ along with a host of other rare photos, including an Alco RS-11 passing the ball signal at Whitefield exposed earlier the same day.

To rescue the Groveton photo, I made a multiple-pass scan using a Nikon LS-5000 scanner driven by VueScan software. I significantly increased the sample rate to minimize the loss of data. Then I imported the RAW file into Lightroom, where I made a variety of heavy-handed adjustments to lighten shadows and hold detail in the sky in order to make for a more pleasing photograph.

Here, I’ve posted bothe unadjusted ‘dark’ photo, and my post processed version aimed to restore the scene so that it looked more like I recall the light on that morning many years ago.

My original scan of my slide as it appears without adjustment. This is more than a full stop underexposed.
My rescued version of the same scan. I lightened the photograph, adjusted shadow and highlight areas, while making localized improvements to various areas of the scene, and adding saturation and contrast controls.

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NHV on LPP—October 1993.

During the summer of 1993, Kodak had introduced a new flavor of Ektachrome slide film with a rating of 100 ISO and a warm color balance.

I bought a few rolls for use imaging trains with New England autumn foliage.

On October 6th of that year I drove to Groveton, NH to intercept the NHV local that worked the old Boston & Maine line toward Whitefield.

It was raining and dark when I pictured the train ambling along a few miles south of Groveton.

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Grand Trunk Station Groveton, NH.

It was a wintery weekend a few weeks ago, when Kris Sabbatino and I briefly revisited the forlorn former Grand Trunk station along Genesee & Wyoming’s St. Lawrence & Atlantic at Groveton, New Hampshire.

I made these digital studies using my Nikon Z6 digital camera, and processed the files for color and contrast in Adobe Lightroom.

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The Old Groveton Station-four recent photos.

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The old Groveton (New Hampshire) station building stands where the former Boston & Maine met the old Grand Trunk. Today the GT route is operated by Genesee & Wyoming’s St Lawrence & Atlantic (known by its reporting marks SLR) while the B&M line is the very lightly used New Hampshire Central route to Hazens, Whitefield and beyond toward Littleton.

On visits here in the 1990s, I’d found the now defunct New Hampshire & Vermont switching the old paper mill at Groveton. But the mill is now a memory. The once imposing structures dwarfed the little brick station building.

I made these digital photos on a recent visit with photographer Kris Sabbatino. All were exposed using a FujiFilm XT1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit and adjusted for shadows/contrast in post processing with Lightroom.

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