On Friday January 24, 2020, I made a series of photos of the former Boston & Maine station at Ely, Vermont.
These views were made looking south toward White River Junction and show the station in partial silhouette against a wintery cotton-candy sky.
I exposed them in RAW using my Lumix LX7 and processed the files using light room to make the most of the dramatic sky.
Tracking the Light post Daily!
Yesterday was pretty frosty when I arrived at Eagle Bridge, New York.
I was just passing though, but made time to expose these photos. Not a wheel was turning, so I made these atmospheric images of the derelict Boston & Maine station and environs, demonstrating that you can make interesting railroad photos without a train.
Exposed digitally using my FujiFilm X-T1
Pat Yough said, ‘You’ve never been here before?’
‘No, somehow I missed this.’
‘How’s that possible?’
I’d been to Gap, Pennsylvania many times to photograph Amtrak trains. But I never ventured railroad-east along the Main Line to Christiana, instead driving Highway 30 toward Coatesville.
I should have known better.
Often the most interesting locations are away from the main road.
There’s your tip for the day!
Three freight railroads, plus Amtrak share the tracks at Bellows Falls. Yet on the morning of my visit last week not a wheel was turning.
I worked with the cosmic morning light to make a few photos of the old station building and the railway environment.
Not all great railway photos need trains. And Tracking the Light is more about the process of making railway photos than simply the execution of ‘great train pictures’.
For these images I worked with my Lumix LX7 (color digital photos) and a Leica 3a with screw-mount 35mm focal length Nikkor lens (black & white photos exposed on Kodak Tri-X and processed in Ilford Perceptol).
I have my favorites. Can you guess which these are?
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
By classic definition a Railroad station is the designated place where the railroad conducts its business. It may, or may not involve a structure.
Too often the station-building is confused for the station itself.
This may seem pedantic, but it leads to both linguistic problems and logistical complications.
Take the old New York Central station building at Garrison, New York. It’s now been repurposed as the Philipstown Depot Theatre. It still looks like a railroad station, but it isn’t one any more.
Today’s Metro-North Garrison station is nearby; this is a modern facility with an ugly overhead footbridge and high-level platforms. The old building is fenced off from the tracks with no access to the line.
Check out my book: Railway Depots, Stations and Terminals published by Voyageur Press.
Read a review of the book by clicking here: https://westernsreboot.com/2015/10/09/train-stations-celebrated-in-new-book/
I made these views using my FujiFilm X-T1.
Low morning sun diffused with light fog (mist) from the Connecticut River made for nearly ideal lighting to capture this station’s classic architecture.
Tracking the Light is on autopilot while Brian is traveling.
On Wednesday January 2, 2013, I revisited Philadelphia’s old Reading Terminal with my brother Sean and Michael Scherer. It was still a functioning passenger terminal when I first visited this iconic railroad facility in the late 1970s with my family. In 2007, I covered its history in my book Railroads of Pennsylvania. Here’s an excerpt of my text:
In the 1890s, Philadelphia & Reading invested its anthracite wealth in construction of one of Pennsylvania’s most ornately decorated company headquarters and passenger terminals. Facing Philadelphia’s Market Street, one of downtown’s main thoroughfares, Reading Terminal represented an ostentatious display of success, but one that now has benefited citizens and visitors to Philadelphia for more than a century.Like many large railway terminals of its time, Reading Terminal followed the architectural pattern established in Britain, perfected at London’s St. Pancras station. This pattern features two distinct structures for the head house and train shed. The Reading station architect, F. H. Kimball, designed the head house to rise nine stories above the street and its façade is made of pink and white granite, decorated with terra cotta trimmings. Behind the head house is the functional part of the station, an enormous balloon-style train shed—the last surviving North American example—designed and built by Philadelphia’s Wilson Brothers. The terminal closed as a result of consolidation of Philadelphia’s suburban services on November 6, 1984. Its modern underground replacement—SEPTA’s Market East Station—is nearby.
Designed by Philadelphia’s Wilson Brothers and built by Charles McCall, Reading Terminal’s vast balloon shed is the last surviving example of its type in the United States.
