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Ware River—May 3, 1999.

It was an overcast morning at Thorndike, Massachusetts, when I set up along Massachusetts Central’s Ware River Line to catch the northward freight.

The pair of classic EMD GPs produced a nice roar as they worked along the Ware River.

Using a borrowed Canon, I made this photo on Fujichrome Velvia (50 ISO slide film).

The soft lighting combined with Velvia’s high saturation allows for a painterly quality. This is improved by lightening the image using Adobe Lightroom.

Below are two versions of the same scan, one is lighter than the other.

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GP9 at Ware—1987.

The other day I was digging around for some Boston & Albany negatives that I’d exposed back in the 1980s in preparation for a program that I’m putting together for the Mass Bay RRE.

Among the negatives I found was a roll of Kodak TMY (T-Max 100) black & white film that I’d exposed with my father’s Rollei Model-T on December 28, 1987.

I’d followed the Mass-Central freight from Palmer up to Ware in a light snow fall. The train had stalled on Ware Hill, but eventually got where it was going.

In this view Mass-Central’s GP9 7015, a former Conrail unit, was holding the mainline, while Mass-Central’s CF-7 2443 switched at the southend of the yard.

It was a gray day, but well suited to the subtle tonality of the Kodak black & white film. I scanned the negatives using my Epson V600 flatbed scanner powered by Epson Scan 2 software. I made some nominal adjustments to contrast to improve presentation here.

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The Mists of TIme

Here’s another one from the ‘3rds’ file.

I’d been chasing the Mass-Central freight and caught it here winding along the Ware River at Thorndike, Massachusetts. Condensation from the factory added atmosphere, and partially obscured former Conrail GP9 7015 that was leading the train that day.

Until a few days ago this image was lost to the mists of time, languishing among ‘BAD’ slides.

It was a Kodachrome 25 exposed using my father’s Leica M3 with f2 Summicron, probably in January 1987.

Although a color slide, there’s very little color in this scene.

I scanned it last night using a Nikon Super Coolscan5000.

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Ware River Branch—November 2019.

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Last November, photographer Mike Gardner and I paid a visit to the Mass-Central and caught the northward freight on its journey over the Ware River Branch from Palmer to South Barre.

Among the photos I exposed was this view at Gilbertville, Massachusetts, working with a Nikon F3 loaded with Ilford HP5 film.

Over the years, I exposed countless photographs along this former Boston & Albany branch; on film, digitally; in color and in black & white.

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