Tag Archives: #Pittston Junction

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

2023, King Coal and Co., at Bloom

The maze of trackage in the Scranton-Wilkes Barre area has always fascinated me.

No less than eight railroads once built into this anthracite rich region. While coal ceased to be a primary source of revenue decades ago, numerous lines remain as a legacy of this once intensive railroad traffic.

Kris and I followed Reading & Northern’s Pittston-Jim Thorpe excursion. Not far from Pittston, I pulled over at the location known as ‘Bloom’ where tracks remain on two levels, and here I exposed this series of photographs.

I can only wonder what this place may have looked like in decades gone by. I was delighted that only minutes passed from the moment of my ‘discovery’ until the passage of this train. ‘King Coal’ is Reading & Northern’s round-end observation car on the tail end of the excursion.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Reading & Northern 2023

On our visit to Pittston Junction, Pa., in June, we witnessed the early evening arrival of the Reading & Northern’s Pittston-Jim Thorpe excursion. In the lead was R&N’s 40th Anniversary (1983-2023) locomotive number 2023, wearing immaculate fresh paint.

Clear skies and low sun made for dramatic light. While impressive, this high-contrast specular lighting result in very dark shadows.

Working with Adobe Lightroom, I made a series of easy corrections to the NEF RAW file to lighten the shadows, darken the highlight areas and lower overall contrast. These changes were aimed a producing a more pleasing and more accurate end photograph.

Take a note of the difference in the shadows around the locomotive trucks. The wide dynamic range offered by Nikon Z7-II digital camera captures a lot of detail in the shadow areas that may not be evident when viewing the unadjusted RAW file.

I’ve included the Lightroom work-window so you can see the relative postion of the slider controls and how these altered the RAW image.

Lightroom JPG created directly from the NEF RAW file without alteration to color, contrast or exposure.
This JPG was created from the same NEF RAW file as the top image, but reflects changes to contrast and selective adjustment to shadow and highlight areas. See the screenshot of the Adobe Lightroom work- window below for the postion of the slider adjustments.
Screenshot of the Adobe Lightroom work-window showing the position of slider controls at right.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Pittston Junction—Haven of the Antique EMD

The other day day, Kris and I called into Pittston Junction.

This is my new favorite place:

Wide open for photography, deep in history, and a haven of old General Motors diesel-electric locomotives.

The GP39RNs were once GP30s, and they still look the part.

The wigwag grade crossing signals were an added bonus.

Tracking the Light Posts Every Day!