This was one of dozens of Kodachrome slides I exposed in California’s Tehachapi mountains on April 3, 1993—25 Years ago today.
Fellow photographer Brian Jennison and I were on an epic excursion making images of Southern Pacific and Santa Fe trains.
For this view I’m standing on a hillside near Tunnel 2 looking toward Bealville of a westward Santa Fe intermodal train. It was a beautiful Spring morning and the purple lupin flowers were in bloom.
In March 1987, I exposed this Kodachrome 25 color slide of Genesee & Wyoming GP38 number 51 leading an empty salt train arriving at P&L Junction (P&L infers Pittsburgh & Lehigh) near Caledonia, New York.
At that time Genesee & Wyoming was a New York state short line that had just recently expanded with the creation of the Rochester & Southern to operate the former Baltimore & Ohio (nee Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg) 4th Subdivision between Rochester and East Salamanca, New York via Ashford Junction. (R&S had trackage rights on CSX from Ashford Jct. to East Salamanca).
This train was arriving from interchange with the Delaware & Hudson at Silver Springs. (D&H had trackage rights over the former Erie Railroad line to Buffalo.) It would reverse direction at P&L Junction and head southward on G&W’s own line (seen in the immediate foreground) to Retsof, where G&W served a massive salt mine.
Back then G&W 51 had no special significance, but it does for me today.
Classic Diesels with Autumn Foliage.
In 1989, Napa Valley Wine Train began public operations on a former Southern Pacific branch through its namesake valley. I first explored this railway in October 1989. A little more than a year later, Brian Jennison and I spent a very productive day photographing the line on Kodachrome.
Brian lent me a Nikon 300mm lens for this photograph. I’ve always like the image because the extreme compression offered by the long telephoto accentuated the classic lines of the Montreal Locomotive Works diesels (and the steam era bell on the top of the lead unit) while offering a pleasing juxtaposition between the train and the background foliage.
