Steam on the mainline on 11 Sept 2019.
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland steam engine number 4 leads the Steam Dreams excursion at Portarlington.
To improve the overall appearance of these photos I made minor adjustments to colour temperature and saturation to my FujiFilm XT1 RAW files.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
Last Saturday (7 September 2019) I made this classic view of the steam crew with locomotive 85 at Mallow, County Cork.
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland’s former Great Northern Railway (of Ireland) compound 4-4-0 85 had been assigned to work the annual Steam Dreams tour and was running around its train.
While the locomotive garnered most of the attention, here I focused on the men who operate it.
Classic?
Yes. This photo follows in a long tradition: Since photography was invented we’ve been making images of steam crews with their engines.
Exposed digitally using my Lumix LX7.
Learn more about the RPSI and their excursion operations: https://www.steamtrainsireland.com/whats-on
Tracking the Light Posts Every Day!
It’s not all about trains. It never was.
Over the weekend, Ken Fox, Donncha Cronin and I made an exploration of abandoned Irish railways in counties Carlow and Wexford.
We began at Bagenalstown and worked our toward Wexford.
I find long abandoned railways inherently compelling, but sometimes difficult to convey in pictures.
This is a selection of images from my FujiFilm XT1 on the Bagenalstown to Palace East route, a line shut to traffic in the 1960s. In some places structures, bridges and rights-of-way remain, in others the line has been reclaimed and there’s virtually nothing left to see.
These photos are to convey the aura of the closed line, I’ve made no effort to place them in geographical order.
In tomorrow’s post, I’ll cover the visual highlight of the line.
Tomorrow (Monday, 9 October 2017), I’ll be presenting my program on Railway Photography to the Irish Railway Record Society in Cork.
This will be held at 8:00pm (2000) at the Bru Columbanus meeting room in Wilton, Cork City. (see Google Maps).
I’ll display a great variety of railway images exposed in Ireland and elsewhere, with an emphasis on photos of Irish Rail in counties Cork, Kerry, Tipperary and Limerick.
The program will be aimed at enlightening the audience on precisely I how I made images (with detailed technical explanations as required). I’ll take questions at the end.
Wellington Testimonial viewed from Islandbridge Junction.
Dublin has lit many of its most prominent architecture for St Patrick’s Day. The Wellington Testimonial in the Phoenix Park is believed to be the tallest obelisk in Europe. In the mid-19th century, when the railway line was built below the park, engineers were concerned that if the line passed to near the monument, it might undermine the massive structure. As a result the Phoenix Park tunnel is ‘S’-shaped, and swings to the west of the obelisk’s base.
For more St. Patrick’s Day images click on Tracking the Light’s Dublin Page.
Ireland’s Bord na Móna (Peat Board) was the topic of my post, Gallery 8: Irish Bog Railways—Part 1 in November 2012. Yesterday, February 16 2013, I made another exploratory trip into the bog. Where previous investigations focused on operations at Edenderry, County Offaly, this trip was to the network that serves the Lough Ree Power Station along the River Shannon at Lanesborough, County Longford. Among the peculiarities of Bord na Móna’s narrow gauge operations are its temporary sidings laid out on the bog for the purpose of loading trains. Until put in place, these tracks resemble those of an oversized model railway and are in fixed sections held together by steel sleepers (ties), and often stacked in piles awaiting installation. The bog itself is spongy and wet, thus ill suited to permanent infrastructure. Since temporary track is only used at very slow speed for short periods of time, niceties normally afforded railway lines, such as grading, leveling, and drainage, aren’t considered.
This telephoto view exaggerates the undulating quality of a roadside Bord na Mona spur used to access an area of bog ready for harvesting. This particular section of track may be left in place for years to tap short-lived harvesting spurs.
This photographic adventure is among my works in progress; I plan to display more images of Bord na Móna in upcoming posts.
