Working with my Nikon NZ-II mounted on a compact Gitzo tripod, I made a variety of photos around Cork City.
The tripod allowed me use a lower ISO, which required a slower shutter speed but captures a greater amount of data with minimal loss.
Working with Lightroom, I adjusted shadows and highlights to reduce contrast and make for better balanced images despite the prevailing darkness punctuated by harsh artificial light.
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Over the years I’ve made numerous visits to Irish Rail’s Glounthaune station in County Cork. But only rarely, I have I made night photos here.
This was one of several photos exposed on the down platform using my Nikon Z7-II mounted on my old mini-Gitzo tripod during our brief visit to Glounthaune a couple of weeks ago.
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During our week-long visit to County Cork, we took many photos and became re-acquainted with the area’s railways.
I made these views at Woodhill on the Cobh Branch of Irish Rail’s 830pm train from Cobh to Kent Station. To minimize the motion of the passing train, I set the ISO on my Nikon Z7-II to 25600.
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We spent nearly a week at the Clermont Hotel that is physically part of London’s historic Charing Cross Station.
In our wanders around the neighborhood, I made these photos of the railway station and its environs.
Photos were exposed digitally using my Nikon and Lumix cameras.
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London’s Paddington Station offers the extreme contrast of very modern trains in a Victorian setting.
I highlighted Paddington Station in my book Brian Solomon’s Railway Guide to Europe, published by Kalmbach Media in 2018:
Paddington is one of the most impressive London stations, built by Victorian master engineer Isambard K. Brunel for his broad gauge Great Western Railway (built with tracks just over 7 feet wide). It opened 1854 to replace GWR’s original but cramped station located a short distance to the west. Paddington’s great shed was originally a three span wrought iron roof (one of the first train sheds inspired by Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace of 1851) . . . The old shed was augmented in 1914 by a forth span constructed from steel and glass, yet retaining the spirit of the original roof . . .
Kris and I paid several visits to this grand theatre of British Railways during our February 2024 trip. The most visually impressive was on the return from Oxford on a Saturday evening, when the blue glow of dusk fascilitated added charm. Recent restorations of the train shed included some stunning lighting of the iron work, which is made most impressive during the transition from day to night.
I made these photos with my Nikon Z7-II.
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At peak times, London Underground trains on the Circle/District Line run about every two minutes. We were waiting for an anti-clockwise (counter-clockwise) Circle Line train.
With a roar and a blast of musty air trains entered the station.
Using my Lumix LX7, I made these photos at Embankment in the heart of central London. One of the benefits of working with digital photography in the Underground is the ablity to get good white balance.
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London is a leader of World Class cities: It is distinctive, distinguished and visually striking.
I made these views at dusk along the Thames near Victoria Embankment last week using my Nikon Z7-II.
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Dublin Area Rapid Transit is an electrified suburban service focused on Dublin’s Connolly Station. This shares routes with diesel powered trains and provides a regular interval passenger service.
The oldest of its cars are the German built 8100, 8300 series units that date to beginning of the service in the early 1980s. I first photographed the DART in 1998.
I made these photos on Satruday using a Lumix LX3. Kris and I were on our way to Malahide, which is the northern extremity of the DART service.
Following its recent re-introduction to my camera arsenal, I’m continuing to experiment with a Lumix LX3, after nearly a decade since my original LX3 failed following more than 65,000 exposures. The LX3 was my first digital camera.
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Forty-two years ago I regularly listened to the radio program Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy adapted from the books by Douglas Adams and presented by BBC.
My father had bought a Grundig portable radio that received shortwave among other frequencies. In the wee-hours, this allowed me to tune in this exotic program from across the pond.
One of the themes of Hitchhikers was the number 42, which was the answer to the ultimate question of the Life, the universe, and everything.
During this same time, I took a photography class at the Wilbraham & Monson Academy taught by Mark Bistline. Among other things, Mark introduced me to Ilford HP5 black & white film. Until that time, I’d largely only used Kodak films.
My father drove me to the Central Vermont Railway yard in Palmer, Massachusetts. I exposed my roll of HP5 with my Leica 3A rangefinder, making a series of images of CV’s Alco RS-11 number #3614 that was idling there.
I also made a recording of the locomotive. I don’t know what became of the recording, but the HP5 negatives still remain in my collection 42 years later.
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A week ago and a world away, wintery dusk settled over Reinholds Station, Pennsylvania.
The blue hour was golden.
Next to the old Reading station rested former New York, Susquehanna & Western GP18 1802.
This quaint setting is rare in 21st century railroading and befitting of a model railroad.
Photos were made with a Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm mounted on a Bogen tripod to allow for long exposure. NEF RAW files adjusted using Adobe Lightroom.
Evening with Tracking the Light!
For my birthday, my father had given me a roll of Fujichrome Provia 100F.
More than 40 years earlier, he would often provide a roll of Kodachrome (with Kodak mailer) on my special day. I still have many of those slides in my collection, most of subjects long since gone.
While visiting Cape Cod, I finished the Ektachrome that had been in my Nikon for months and loaded up the lone roll of Fujichrome Provia.
Among the film photos I made on the trip was this view of Mass-Coastal’s ‘Energy Train’ passing the harbor at Buzzards Bay on its return from Rochester, Massachusetts.
I received this processed film back from the lab last week. I was delighted! Almost every color slide was a winner!
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Back on November 17, 2023, Kris and I had paused at Reading & Northern’s Pittston Junction yard.
It had been months since the last time I exposed a color slide.
I had my Nikon F3 with me because we were on our way to Cape Cod, and I anticipated wanting to make a few slides of our trip.
So after making a variety of photos with my digital cameras, I dusted off the F3 and made two Ektachrome slides of Reading & Northern 2535, in what appeared as a classic railroad scene.
Why just two slides? Well, this was because after I exposed the second photo the battery in the camera died. That is one of the dangers of infrequent camera use.
When we final got to the Cape, I replaced the battery and finished off my roll of film.
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I don’t expose very much slide film any more.
The high cost of the film and processing, combined with the burden of carrying extra camera equipment, has limited my film usage to just a few rolls per year.
Last week, I received several processed rolls back from the lab, which accounted for the majority of the film photos I made during 2023.
Among these were a few photos I made on January 24, 2023 during a trip with Conway Scenic’s Snow Plow Extra that cleared to Mountain Junction and then east on the Redstone Branch in North Conway, New Hampshire.
These were exposed on Kodak Ektachrome 100 using a Nikon F3.
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At 11:35am on August 18, 1988, I photographed Conrail C32-8 6616 leading MBSE (Middleboro to Selkirk, otherwise known as ‘The Queen’) across the former Boston & Albany bridge over the Connecticut River.
The C32-8s were among the GE’s known as ‘Camels’ because of their humpback appearance.
These were called ‘Classics’ by the folks at GE to distinguish them from the more Spartan DASH-8s produced later.
I’d parked my Dodge Dart in the riverside lot off Route 5, and made my way down to water level, where I exposed this Professional Kodachrome 25 slides.
However, in trying to get as close to the water as possible (without falling in), I managed to lose my sense of level, and the resulting image was several degrees off-axis.
For many years this slide was relegated to binder of my ‘seconds’.
The other night I scanned the slide, corrected the level and improved the color balance. (Professional Kodachrome had a tendency to shift toward the red).
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The tracks of the former Reading Company’s Lancaster & Columbia line through Lititz, Pa, were trimmed back a few blocks in recent months.
The rails were lifted where they crossed North Water Street, near the Appalachian Brewing Company.
I made these photos while experiementing with a vintage-2008 Lumix LX3. A decade ago, I’d made a lot of great photos with this compact camera model.
While I ultimately replaced my original LX3 with the more versatile LX7, I again have an LX3 in my repertoire of photographic equipment. This camera’s f2.8 Leica Vario-Summicron lens yields excellent results.
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I was surprised to hear a whistle to the west, when we were exploring the Shikellamy State Park along the Susquehanna River near Sunbury, Pa.
Then when the train came into view on the far side of the river, I had vivid sense of Conrail-blue deja vu.
The last time, I’d visited this bridge, photographer Mike Gardner and I had caught the eastward Norfolk Southern freight symbol 13W led by a former Conrail GE C40-8 still in the classic Conrail paint, and then a little while later, we photographed the westward NS 41T with Canadian National locomotives. But that was back in November 2001!
Fast forward: Conrail’s days as an independant Class I carrier are now a quarter century behind us, so what was this modern GE in blue paint Kris and I saw last week?
As the unit coal train (NS 632) rolled across the multiple-span truss bridge, I realized what I was looking at:
Norfolk Southern’s specially painted Conrail heritage locomotive! This is a General Electric ES44AC, engine number 8098, an Evolution-series 4,400 hp low-emissions diesel-electric.
Conrail never owned anything quite so advanced.
I made my photos and then Kris and I decided to follow the train back down NS’s Buffalo Line. This was a rare find! It was our lucky day! Lucky!
I had a couple of prime locations in mind, if we could only stay ahead of the train!
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My first digital camera was a Panasonic Lumix LX3. I bought it on the recommendation of Eric Rosenthal in October 2009.
I made tens of thousands of photographs with that wee camera. It finally gave up the ghost in June 2014. I replaced it with my first Lumix LX7.
By that time I had bought a Canon EOS-7D, which I was relying upon for much of my heavy photography. However, I carried the Lumix with me everywhere. As I’ve explained previously, the camera you use is the one in your hand. So, while I often have with me a BIG camera, a Lumix is typically at the ready in my pocket.
I later bought a Fuji XT1, which largely supplanted the Canon. In 2020, I bought my first Nikon Z, which largely supplanted the XT1. By that stage, I was on my third Lumix LX7. In 2022, our friend Bill Keay gave Kris and me a brand new Lumix LX3. Still in the box, this camera had been his father’s and he wanted us to have it.
Although I’ve been using an LX7 for almost 10 years, on reflection I’ve often felt that I had made better photos with the old LX3, despite the more modern camera (LX7) with its faster lens, longer zoom range, and better operating software.
The other day I finally unboxed the 2008-vintage LX3, charged its battery and set it up to shoot JPG and RAW at its highest resolution.
Kris and I drove over to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylania, where I made a series of comparison views. The files below are all RAW and unaltered in post processing except for scaling. Each is identified by the camera used.
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The former Pennsylvania Railroad’s Northern Central route north of Harrisburg toward Northumberland, Pa., (and beyond) is operated by Norfolk Southern as its Buffalo Line.
In the late-1990s, toward the end of the Conrail-era, photographer Mike Gardner and I began exploring this route, and continued our photography along the line ifor several years after Norfolk Southern assumed operations. However, it had been more than twenty years since I had taken a serious look of the railroad north of the Harrisburg area.
A few days ago, we had a rare sunny day, so Kris and I made an adventure of following the east bank of the Susquehanna River compass north toward Sunbury.
We stopped at few locations. At Sunbury, I was curious get re-acquaited with the railroad and its connections. On the north side of town, we visited the Shikellamy State Park, where Mike and I had caught NS freight 41T back in November 2001. At that time NS was still operating the line as a through freight route all the way to Buffalo, NY.
As I was photographing the bridges from the park, I heard a whistle to the west . . .
Stay tuned for more!
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Among my black & white negatives from years gone by, is a sheet of 16 frames of 120 Kodak Tri-X that I exposed using my father’s old Rolleiflex Model-T in August of 1986.
I’d spent a week in Maine visiting with my friend Robert A. Buck, proprietor of Tucker’s Hobbies in Warren, Massachusetts.
Among his other guests was photographer Brandon Delaney. During our visit, Brandon and I spent several days exploring Maine railways, including Bangor & Aroostook, Belfast & Moosehead Lake, Canadian Pacific and Maine Central.
On a visit to Searsport, I made this photo of the freight that ran four or five days a week from Northern Maine Junction (near Bangor) to Searsport. The locomotives were working trackage that served the Searsport Pier.
Film was precious. I only brought a few rolls of 35mm Kodachrome and several 120 rolls of black & white.
This scene was back-lit, but I felt it was sufficiently worthy to invest one frame. I scanned it the other day and made a few improvements to contrast, eliminated some spots and scaled the output for presentation here.
A lot has changed since August 1986. I wonder when the last train used the Searsport Pier?
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The weather was mild and the light was dull when I crossed Willow Road and spotted the headlight of Norfolk Southern’s New Holland Branch freight.
I zipped down the line to Creek Hill Road in Leola, Pa., where I opted for a slightly different angle than the one I posted from this location on Tracking the Light a few days ago.
In these views, I composed photos to include the road.
Also, where in my previous encounters with the New Holland Branch local, locomotives were working back to back on the train. On this day, sequentially numbered GP38-2s were ‘topped and tailed’ (to use a British descriptive phrase). In other words, there were locomotives positioned at both ends of the train.
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Over the last few months, I’ve exposed photographs of Pennsylvania’s Strasburg Rail Road from a similar angle at Carpenters Cemetery near Blackhorse Road.
I find it fascinating to see how the light and environment changes with the seasons.
Subtle changes in the growth in the surrounding fields, the relative height of the sun in the sky, combined with changes in color temperature owing to humidity, clouds, and dust in the atmosphere are evident is this sequence of photos.
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Wayne Duffett of TEC Associates included my 2007 photo of Middletown & Hummelstown 2-6-0 number 91 crossing Swatara Creek on the cover of the railroad’s 2023 Bridge Inspection Report. Wayne dedicated the report to the memory of railroad’s Wendell Dillinger who passed away in late 2023.
I made the photo on a visit to the M&H with railroad historian Kurt Bell. At the time I was researching for my book Railroads of Pennsylvania, published in 2008 by Voyageur Press.
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Among my thousands of black & white negatives is a three-ring binder that is largely filled with film exposed for class projects and related photographic studies when I was a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The other night I located a processed, sleeved and completely unlabled roll of Kodak Plus-X. Most of the film was of Conrail trains on the former Erie Railroad in the vicinity of Hornell, NY.
In the late 1980s, I regularly frequented New York’s Southern Tier to make photos. Over the course of about five years I made dozens of trips.
I have detailed photo notes from many of these trips, so while scanning the negatives with my Epson V600 scanner, I started to solve the mystery.
I recalled the day in question, but couldn’t remember exactly when it was. The sky was gray and the landscape bare, so I surmised it was early 1989. The challenge was figuring out which day, since between November 1988 and early May 1989, I made more than a dozen trips through this area.
Key to the mystery were the trains. I typically logged passing trains by leading locomotive and train symbol, while keeping track of film type, exposure notes, the time, along with other relevant details.
Conrail SD50 6746 was a clue. This was leading a westward freight. Another clue were the semaphores at milepost 337, located just west of the village of Arkport, NY. Conrail 3171 led an eastward freight and these details helped me locate the correct log sheet.
My notes from January 14, 1989 put most of the remaining pieces together and I labled both the original negative sheet with date and locations, while scanning and labeling the negatives.
Although it wasn’t noted, I recall that the black & white photos on that day were made with my father’s Leica double-stroke M3 rangefinder. I used my own Leica M2 to expose color slides.
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A ten minute drive will take me to the Creek Hill Road crossing of Norfolk Southern’s New Holland Branch.
I’d been eyeing this location for a few months. Finally on a bright morning, I timed it right to catch the New Holland local freight with a pair of SD40E (former SD50) diesels in classic three-quarter sunlight.
I exposed a couple of Provia 100F color slides, which I am waiting to be returned from the lab. Then I used my Nikon Z7-II to make a series of images of the passing train.
These are part of my ongoing Conrail SD50 retrospective. These locomotives were built between 1983 and 1986, the first of which were delivered during my senior year at Monson Jr-Sr High School. I think it’s really neat that these familiar aged beasts regularly pass near my new home.
Nothing lasts forever, and I wonder how much longer I’ll have the opportunity to catch the old Conrail locomotives on the move!
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There hasn’t been a lot of snow this winter in Strasburg, Pa.
So, when about six inches fell a couple of weeks ago, Kris and I decided to make the most of it.
These photos were made braving the cold at Blackhorse Road to capture Strasburg Rail Road’s 4pm excursion to Leaman Place.
There’s such a contrast in the seasons, it’s hard to fathom that this is same crossing where we made many photos during the summer months.
I converted one of the images to monochrome for dramatic effect. All were exposed digitally using my Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm lens.
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In January 1984, I’d driven my parent’s 1978 gray Ford Grenada to Palmer, Massachusetts.
A set of Conrail light engines blitzed past me, and I chased after them.
In consist was a couple of brand-new EMD SD50s and a few new GE B36-7s.
This was pretty exciting stuff! I was 17 at the time.
I chased east on Routes 20 and 67. At Kings Bridge Road east of Palmer I turned toward Conrail’s Boston & Albany line, but the Conrail engines were too close for me to get a lineside photo. So, I stopped the car in the middle of the road, raised my 1930s-era Leica IIIA and shot through the windshield of the Ford.
My camera was loaded with Kodak Tri-X— film that I later processed in Kodak Microdol-X developer.
Tracking the Light Looks Back 40 years!
During 1987 and 1988, I spent a fair amount of time around Rochester & Southern’s Brooks Avenue Yard.
This was a former Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh yard and located near the Rochester, NY airport, on the southwest side of the city.
On January 27, 1988, I made this black & white photo on 120 size film Tri-X using a Rolleiflex Model-T with a 645-size insert. My goal was to overexpose the film and then underprocess it to maximize tonality.
I processed it using a diluted mix of Kodak D-76. It was a good effort, but I was still learning to master this technique.
The primary subject was R&S’s recently acquired SW1200 number 107, a former Southern Pacific switcher that still featured SP’s distinctive full lighting package (including both white and red oscillating lights, visable above the cab).
Upon scanning the original negative the other day, I was delighted to see that my old Plymouth Scamp is also featured. I’d parked the car in the yard, and it is visable in the distance to the left of the switcher. That Scamp was my first car. I drove it for tens of thousands of miles in the mid-1980s making photos across New York and New England.
Tracking the Light Posts new material every day!
Every so often Tracking the Light suffers from a technical problem.
Over the last few days a number of regular subscribers have let me know that they stopped receiving the daily email notifications. However, many of TTL’s subscribers have continued to receive them. I don’t know why this has happened, nor do I know how to best address the problem.
Over the last few hours, I’ve implemented a variety of changes to WordPress, which is the Tracking the Light platform. These changes have included installing a host of updates and installing a new Theme. The ‘Theme’ affects the visual presentation, and as a result of this change Tracking the Light should look different. In conjunction with the new theme, I deleted many of the older themes, which was among the actions recommended to improve security and performance.
I am hoping that the changes and updates will address the problems, however I’m am not a computer wizard and I’m not fluent on the details of how to correct all problems facing my WordPress platform.
I’ve included a photo for your enjoyment. Thank you for your patience!
Brian Solomon
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Paradise Lane was being whipped by a razor’s wind. Although the ambient temperature was 20F, with the windchill it felt much colder.
Strasburg Rail Road 4-8-0 No. 475 was working its way back toward the East Strasburg Station,
Braving the wind and cold, I made these photos with my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm zoom
The fine blowing snow and locomotive exhaust made for more dramatic images.
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The combination of a low ceiling, a bright moon and the blanket of snow covering the ground made for interesting evening light.
While there really wasn’t enough light to stop a fast moving Amtrak Keystone, I felt the ambient lighting conditions were still conducive to photography.
I set up my Bogen tripod in the snow and attached to it my Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm Nikkor Z-series lens.
After a few test photos at ISO 200 to check my angle and lighting, I set the ISO to 2000 and waited fo the Keystone to zip by at speed.
The final pair of photos were exposed a f4, for 1.6 seconds with the lens set to 24mm.
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Here’s a lesson in snow photography:
Bright snow, black locomotive and arctic cold. The contrast between light and dark was a challenge, but the largest difficulty was the fine snow blowing across the open landscape, which blurred the hightlights and muted shadows in unexpected ways.
The raw cold hit me like a razor which made it difficult to think straight.
Yet, through it all, I persevered and made this sequence of Strasburg Rail Road 475 running tender first leading a mid-day train toward Leaman Place, Pennsylvania.
The lessons are: keep at it, get your focus point set where you need it, over expose by at least 1/3 of a stop, and don’t give up!
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It was a dark frosty morning on January 22, 2009, when photographers Tim Doherty, Denis McCabe and I explored the Prague (Praha) suburban station at Praha-Rusyne located to the east of the city center.
I made this photo on Fujichrome. I scanned this with a Nikon LS5000 scanner and then processed the TIF file using Adobe Lightroom. I enhanced the contrast and saturation for dramatic effect.
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The magnificent bridges at Safeharbor make for great subjects.
I’ve yet to see a train at this location. And much to my regret, in all likelihood, I will never see a train on the taller of the two bridges—since this now carries a rail trail instead of a railroad.
Kris and I have paid visits to Safeharbor in various seasons. Winter yields stark lighting ideal for making silhouettes of the great spans.
I made these views using my Nikon Z7-II with 28-70mm Nikkor zoom, and Kris’s Fuji XT4 with my 50-140mm Fujinon telephoto.
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Early in the winter, we drove north into coal country.
I was curious to visit Lykens, a comparatively remote Pennsylvania town, that was once at the end of a Reading Company line which had included a switchback near Tower City.
Upon reaching Lykens, we found little evidence of the old Reading, now many decades gone. However, we located the old Pennsylvania Railroad station and yard.
The station is now a museum, although it was closed on the afternoon of our visit.
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1998 and 2024.
Like it or not, local spelling (and pronunciation) is always correct.
I visited Mannheim, Germany in August 1998, where I made this Sensia color slide of a DB class 103 electric departing the main station.
Manheim, Pennsylvania is a town on the old Reading Company that is less than half an hour from our home in Lancaster.
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Fortune was with us on Saturday.
After lunch, we drove the back way over to Christiana, Pa., where I hoped to catch Amtrak 670 in the afternoon sun.
The tracks are oriented on a south-north alignment at Christiana, which makes it a good place to photograph eastward train on a sunny day, if you mind the shadows.
Where Keystone 670 was pretty much ‘on the advertised,’ Amtrak 42, the eastward Pennsylvanian had fallen down a bit, and was just a few minutes behind.
So for the effort of one eastward train, we caught two! One electric and one diesel.
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