Tag Archives: #railroads

photography, Tips and Technique

Conrail at Milepost 119

Here’s a photo from my black & white archives that I’d completely dismissed. I’d exposed it at Huntington, Massachusetts in March 1985.

There were a few of problems with this image that irked me.

The first was cosmic. Moments before I release the shutter, a cloud coverd the front of the train. That sort of thing used to drive me nuts.

The second was strategic. I’d released the shutter a little earlier than I’d like, leaving the train just a bit distant. I didn’t have a motor drive in those days, and typically would wait for the decisive moment to take my photo.

The third was a chronic failing from my Leica 3 days. I tended to photograph slightly off level, leaving most of my photos annoyingly tilted.

All of these flaws are now easily overcome using Adobe Lightroom.

I altered the exposure and contrast to correct for the obscured sun, while bringing in sky detail partially lost to over exposure. I cropped the photo to minimize the foreground, and this pleasantly altered the composition to feature the code lines to the right of the locomotives and milepost 119 on the left. Lastly, I leveled the image, a task that take now about 2 seconds.

Looking at this photo now, I find that I’m very pleased with it. It has aged very well. The minor flaws don’t bother me, since these were easily corrected, while the overall subject fascinates me. It is the time machine I needed today.

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Here’s the original, unaltered image for comparison.
photography

Norfolk Southern Local at Hunt

It was a warm November morning, when Kris and I visited Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on the old Pennsylvania Railroad Middle Division.

Years ago, my old pal TSH and I would visit his grandmother who lived in Huntingdon. Kris and I drove around the village and I located the row house where Gram H. once lived. Then we proceeded to the Amtrak station to wait for the eastward Pennsylvanian.

Norfolk Southern fielded a few freights ahead of Amtrak, including this short local frieght led by a lone SD70ACU. Back in the old days, a pair of GP38-2s would have been standard on the local.

Norfolk Southern local freight passes HUNT tower in Huntingdon, PA.

Photos exposed using my Nikon Z6 with f2.8 70-200mm zoom lens.

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Alcos at Dublin Street

On January 27, 1984, I made a few photos of Central Vermont Alco RS-11s switching at Dublin Street in Palmer, Massachusetts.

Locomotive 3608 was a rare bird on CV’s Palmer Subdivision. I only caught it in daylight on a few occasions. This RS-11 was distinctive for its boxy chopped nose on its short hood.

I scanned this negative a few days ago using my Epson V600 flatbed scanner and made some very minor post-processing adjustments to contrast using Adobe Lightroom.

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Norfolk Southern at Hollidaysburg.

On our way east on Route 22 last November, Kris and I overtook a Norfolk Southern local freight with a GP40-2 slug set that was switching on a vestige of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Hollidaysburg, PA.

I made these digital photos working with my Nikon Z6 and 24-70 and 70-200mm zoom lenses.

The stone retaining wall along the road caught my attention.

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Amtrak 321 leading train 448 Eastbound at West Brookfield.

I scribbled locations and dates on an envelope back in the Spring of 1985, when ‘d processed this roll of Ilford FP4.

I’d bulk-rolled the film myself, thus allowing 39 frames on one roll of film, which I then exposed with a Leica 3A between March 31 and April 6 (my notes say April 5) 1985.

I recall the day, which was a Sunday. I started photographing in Palmer, Massachusetts, where I met Mike Tylick and his young son. I then followed Conrail’s former Boston & Albany route east in pursuit of a slow moving freight.

At West Brookfield, Massachusetts I caught up with my friend Bob Buck, who was train watching while reading his Sunday newspaper.

In this photograph, I’ve posed Amtrak’s eastward Lake Shore Limited, train 448, led by F40PH-2 #321, by the 1840s-era Western Railroad passenger station, which is among the oldest surviving railroad buildings in New England.

I’d borrowed my parent’s Chevy Impala (seen at the left) as I didn’t yet have my own car. The front of Bob’s green Ford van can be seen at the right.

Conrail’s B&A was still directional double track under rule 251 that governed movements in the current of traffic by signal indication.

My photo skills weren’t fantastic, but rapidly improving.

Last night I scanned this image using an Epson V600 flatbed scanner, and adjusted the RAW file from the scanner using Adobe Lightroom. This included cropping of the top of the frame to limit the amount of sky and the bottom of the frame to minimize foreground clutter.

The actual date of the photo confounds me. I know it was a Sunday, which was either March 31 or April 6. Somewhere I have a small six-ring orange notebook filled with my photo notes from 1985. This will likely solve my date quandary. But does anyone really care?

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Noctunal Views from the Tunnel Inn.

Among the features of staying at the Tunnel Inn in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania is the porch at the back of the building that over looks the Main Line.

This is equipped with lights designed to illuminate the railroad to aid in the views of passing freights.

On our second evening at the Tunnel Inn back in mid-November (2021), I exposed this sequence of eastward Norfolk Southern freight 36A (Conway Yard to Edgemore, Delaware).

This was an enormous freight. In addition to head-end power, there were both mid-train and tail-end distributed power units (remote control diesels).

I made all these photos using my Nikon Z6.

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255 From the Wisps of Time

In my archive of Kodachrome slides, I found this view from October 1982.

I’d been traveling on a Mystic Valley excursion that was returning from a run through the Hoosac Tunnel.

At Greenfield, Massachusetts we overtook an eastward Boston & Maine freight led by Maine Central run-through power.

In the lead was GP38 255.

At the time, locomotive 255 was just one of 13 Maine Central GP38s.

Today 255 is Conway Scenic’s latest purchase.

Interestingly, in October 1982, Maine Central’s Mountain Division was still open as a through freight route.

My 39 year slide is a difficult image. Hard backlighting, combined with suboptimal exposure on my part led to a pretty dark slide. Worse, in processing Kodak didn’t produce the best result, which suffers from a heavy magenta color bias.

I scanned the image and then made a series of adjustments to make it better. I’ve also included a recent photo of former Maine Central 255 on Conway Scenic.

Unaltered Kodachrome slide of Maine Central 255 at Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Adjusted slide.

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Tips and Technique

GP38-2 with WInter Sky . . .

. . . Sky ‘enhanced’, that is.

The other day on a brief visit to Palmer, Massachusetts,Kris and I paused for a minute to make a photo of this Buffalo & Pittsburgh GP38-2 at the New England Central’s former Central Vermont yard. (Both NECR and B&P are part of the Genessee & Wyoming family.)

I thought of the countless photos that I’ve made of locomotives here over the last 45 years. Yet, I had never seen this locomotive here before. (Or certainly not in its current guise anyway.)

I made the image toward the end of daylight. Rich winter light graced the late afternoon sky, while the locomotive was largely bathed in shadow.

Lumix LX7 photo. I arranged my composition to show more than just the locomotive, but also feature the road, yard tracks, freight cars, and of course the clouds. To minimize the effects of some distracting glint on therighthand number board on the locomotive, I took the photo from a relatively low angle.

To make for a more pleasing image, I balanced the highlights and shadows and made adjustments to color temperature and contrast using Adobe Lightroom. The Sky Mask tool sampled this work. I felt my initial edit was a bit heavy handed so I toned it down a bit for presentation here.

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Coal Hoppers at Horseshoe Curve

In this November 2021 view at the World Famous Horse Shoe Curve west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, I pictured in classic fashion, a westward hopper train (empty coal train) climbing the Main Line toward Gallitzin.

Eighty-one years ago, we might have seen an equivalent scene with a pair of PRR L1s Mikados. Where Norfolk Southern has hundreds of GE Dash 9s, PRR had more than 500 2-8-2s.

I wonder what will be leading freights on the Curve in 2102?

Exposed digitally using a Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens.

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Stuffed Tank at Loon

I love just the title of today’s post.

Two months ago, on our way back from Lincoln, New Hampshire, Kris and I paused near the enterance to the Loon Mountain resort so I could photograph the preserved locomotive on display.

This Porter 0-4-0T is a vestige of the old East Branch & Lincoln logging railway that once operated an extensive network of lightly build lines to tap timber traffic along what is now the Kancamgus Highway.

It was a crisp warm autumn afternoon when I focused my Nikon Z6 on this relic of the steam age. There’s a quality to this photo that just says: Nikon to my eye. That’s neither good nor bad, but it will deserve greater investigation in the coming months.

Slight back lighting helps set off the dark locomotive from its background. Even ‘three quarter’ sun would be less effective.

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Helpers at Gallitzin—1989 and 2021

Much has changed at the summit of the Allegheny Divide in 22 years.

In the 1990s Conrail enlarged the tunnel clearances on one tunnel and added a second track while abandoning an adjacent bore. Conrail operations were conveyed to Norfolk Southern in 1999, and a new bridge was built over the tracks.

Last month on our visit to the Tunnel Inn at Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, I made a variety of photos of Norfolk Southern trains passing through the tunnel.

I thought it would be neat to pair these helper images with vintage photos of Conrail trains from approximately the same location that I made on Kodachrome 25 back in July 1989.

Conrail SD40-2s working as rear-end helpers at milepost 248 in Gallitzin, PA. July 1989.

Norfolk Southern helpers, November 2021.
Norfolk Southern helpers, November 2021.

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Amtrak Pennsylvanian at the Curve—Six Photos

I timed our visit to Horseshoe Curve to coincide with the passage of Amtrak’s eastward Pennsylvanian—train 42.

I made this sequence of the New York- bound train as it descended the curve using both my Nikon Z6 and Lumix LX7 cameras.

Rich Novmeber sun and late season foliage made for a pleasing combination in contrast with the metallic Amtrak equipment.

Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm f2.8 Nikkor Z-series zoom
Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm f2.8 Nikkor Z-series zoom
Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm f2.8 Nikkor Z-series zoom
Lumix LX7 photo.
Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm f2.8 Nikkor Z-series zoom.
Norfolk Southern GEs work west passing Amtrak 42 at Horseshoe Curve. Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm f2.8 Nikkor Z-series zoom

All five images were adjusted in post processing using Adobe Lightroom.

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Blue Cement

We believe this was the second to last Wexford bag cement (also known as a ‘blue cement’ because of the covers on the four wheel freight wagons.)

Working with my old Contax G2 rangefinder, this was one of a series of black & white photos on Kodak Tri-XI exposed of the Irish Rail cement train on April 3, 2002.

Today, the single Bo-Bo diesel leading four-wheel wagons seems like a relic of former times.

How I miss those times.

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Horseshoe Curve—Revisited

My first visit to Horseshoe Curve, Pennsylvania was memorable. It was summer 1981; we arrived in our Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, and as we got out of the car, I could hear a westward train in the distance with the unmistakeable sound of an SD45 in the lead.

Without wasting a moment, I ran the 200 plus steps from the parking lot to the park in time to catch a Conrail 6100-series SD45 leading a freight passing the former Pennsylvania Railroad K4s Pacific that was then on display at the Curve.

Fast forward forty years. This November, Kris and visited the famous Curve on an unseasonably pleasant morning. Not long after we arrived, we heard the thunder of a climbing westward freight, and together we enjoyed its circumfrential passage up the valley.

I made these photos as the Norfolk Southern freight squeeled around the famous Horseshoe Curve.

Lumix LX7 photo at Horseshoe Curve, west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, November 2021.

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Tips and Technique

Blowin’ Snow

Yesterday morning (December 9, 2021) it was 11 degrees F when I arrived at the North Conway Roundhouse.

I was part of a crew to take a light engine west on the Mountain Division to clear crossings.

On the way out to our engine, I paused to make this photo of Matt H clearing snow from the turntable.

And yes, it was as cold as it looks!

Photos exposed using my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm Nikkor Z-series zoom.

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Coal Train at Cassandra

Standing at the Railfan’s Overlook at Cassandra, Pennsylvania we could hear a heavy eastward train climbing the West Slope on Norfolk Southern’s former Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line.

Kris and I had arrived at this famous photo location on our drive east from Illinois last month. It was Kris’s first time at Cassandra, and my first visit here in more than a decade.

Finally after several minutes a headlight appeared on the long tangent looking west toward Johnstown. A slow-moving loaded unit coal train was clawing up grade towards us.

As the train approached and passed us, I made this series of photos using my Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera fitted with a Z-series f2.8 70-200mm zoom lens. A pair of NS SD70ACUs were working at the back of the train.

Looking east at Cassandra as the helpers shove at the back of the eastward loaded coal train.

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Tips and Technique

Beware of Trains

In July 2003, I made this 2/14 inch sqaure black & white photo at Limerick Junction, Co. Tipperary using a Rollei Model-T twin lens reflex.

Working with a relatively slow shutter speed, I allowed the train to blur as it passed the signals at the Dublin-end of the platform.

At that time Limerick Junction was controlled by a mix of tradititional mechanical signals and more modern color lights.

The sign makes the photo.

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At Par for Virgin.

Yes, you read the title correctly.

In July 2002, my Irish friends and I paid a visit to Cornwall in the west of England, to photograph long distance passenger trains on the old Great Western Railway main line.

To make a long story short; the car we were traveling in developed a ‘fault’ at Par, which invovled a delay to our travels, and resulted in a trip on a stink buggy ( a common bus) in order to reach the railway station.

Ultimately the automobile was repaired and so we visited myriad other destinations and locations in the south western regions of England, but in the meantine we made the best of being at the station at Par.

Using my Contax G2 rangefinder, I made this view of an approaching Virgin Cross Country ‘HST’ passenger train operating approaching Par on a bright overcast morning.

I was working with Fuji Neopan 400 black & white film that I later processed using my custom tailored recipe using Agfa Rodinal Special mixed about 1 to 60 with water. If anything, these negatives are too constrasty and required some post processing adjustment using Adobe Lightroom

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Idle Freight in an Austere Landscape.

At the train watching platform in Rochelle, Illinois, a scanner is perpetually broadcasting railroad radio chatter.

On our brief visit there a couple of weeks back, Kris and I overheard BNSF’s dispatcher discussing with unknown parties the status of an eastward unit tank train tied down near Steward.

Armed with this knowledge we drove railroad east through the sprawing industry and cornfields toward Steward, where we found the afforementioned freight. It was crew-less and its headlight extinguished.

I made these photos with my Nikon Z6 and 70-200mm Nikkor zoom lens.

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BNSF Antiques at Rochelle

In the 1980s a pair of SD40-2s was a common find.

Today these old locomotives seem noteworthy.

Kris and I visited Rochelle, Illinois two weeks ago and found this clean pair of BNSF SD40-2s in the siding east of the Union Pacific crossing. I made a few photos with my Lumix LX7 and Nikon Z6 digital cameras.

The light was dull, the landscape uninspiring, but the bright orange paint on the old diesels made for a photogenic subject.

I wonder if in my travels I had ever previously crossed paths with either of these two antique Electro-Motive diesels.

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Holiday Decoration Work Extra.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving—November 24, 2021, Conway Scenic called a work train for the Conway Branch to put up decorations for upcoming Santa’s Holiday Express Christmas themed trains.

I was on-board to assist with decorating while documenting the run. It was a perfectly clear bright sunny morning.

At Moat Brook I organized a special photo stop. At Conway we held for the regularly scheduled Valley train that was operating with RDC #23 Millie.

I made all of these photos using my Lumix LX7 digital camera.

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Soo Line Side Show

The trappings and extras incorporated into November 14th’s Soo Line 1003 photo freight gave the whole experience a throw back feel.

In addition to period freight cars and Soo Line caboose, were some vintage automobiles posed at crossing in Burnett, Wisconsin, where a man played the roll of crossing tender.

Here I focused on the details and extras, making a few photos that appeared like those from more than six decades ago.

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Soo 1003 Teaser

Last Sunday (November 14, 2021), Kris and & I caught up with the Trains Magazine steam photo charter operated with preserved Soo Line 2-8-2 Mikado 1003.

The day was cold, cloudy and snowing lightly; conditions that made for some excellent steam locomotive photography.

The charter was working on the far reaches of the Wisconsin & Southern network north of Horicon, Wisconsin.

I exposed this view using my Panasonic Lumix LX7, and processed the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom.

More photos to come over the coming days.

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Empire Builder—Part 1

The light was fading.

No 8 was running late.

Kris and I arrived at Duplainville, Wisconsin where the Canadian National’s former Wisconsin Central crosses Canadian Pacific’s former Milwaukee Road. We were there just in time to see that the signals were cleared for an eastward train.

We got into position, post haste, to roll by Amtrak’s eastward Empire Builder—train No. 8.

Amtrak No.8, the Empire Builder rolls toward Brookfield Wisconsin.

As No. 8 blitzed by, I made these images working with my Nikon Z6 mirror-less digital camera. I processed the images in Lightroom to make the most of the NEF files recorded by the camera.

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Reading & Northern SW1500

I walked the trail along the Lehigh River in Jim Thorpe on frosty morning last week. This trail runs parallel to Reading & Northern’s former Central Railroad of New Jersey yard.

The yard was once a sprawling sea of track largely used to marshall coal cars moving to and from area mines.

Today, the remains of the yard is primarily a base of operations for R&N’s Lehigh Scenic Gorge Railway.

At the northend of the yard, I spied this R&N SW1500, which made for an interesting subject against the autumn leaves on the hillside. I made these images with my Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera.

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My Conrail

Next Friday evening, (November 12, 2021) I’ll be presenting a mulitmedia program titled; ‘My Conrail,’ to the 25th Anniversary Beecherfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This is my tribute to the Boston & Albany with a selection of photography spanning nearly 30 years.

SEPA/PASE power in Palmer, Massachusetts in 1989. Kodachrome 25 exposed with a Leica M2 and 35mm Summicron.

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Hi-Hood SD45 December 1987.

In the late 1980s Kodak introduced its new T-grain T-Max black & white emulsions.

I quickly adopted these new films in place of Kodak Tri-X and Kodak Plus-X.

After about a year of trial and error with the T-Max films, I opted to return to the more traditional non-T-grain emulsions. In the mean time I committed countless unrepeatable scenes to T-Max.

This photo features a freshly-painted (and only recently acquired) Guilford SD45 eastbound at Greenfield, Massachusetts. I exposed it on 120-size TMY (T-Max 400) film using my father’s Rollieflex Model-T.

Part of the difficulty was that I insisted on developing the film in straight Kodak D76 instead of the recommended T-Max developer. I did this to save money; when I was at RIT in Rochester (actually Henrietta), New York, photo students received basic photo chemistry as part of their lab fee, which meant I could get all the D76 I wanted without any additional cost, while T-Max developer had to be purchased.

What I saved in developer, I’ve paid 100-fold in laborious print making and difficult scanning.

However, using Adobe Lightroom I’ve finally been able to get decent tonality out of these 34 year-old photos.

Springfield Terminal SD45 679 leads an eastward road freight at Greenfield, Massachusetts on December 19, 1987.

The SD45 has always been a favorite locomotive, and at the time I was quite pleased to catch Guilford’s latest motive power in fresh paint.

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AEM-7 and an E-unit—August 1981.

My grandparents had a grand view of the old New Haven Railroad at Pelham Bay Park from their apartment in Co-op City, The Bronx, New York.

Using my old Leica IIIa, I made hundreds of photos of trains rolling along under wire.

This is among the more unsual photos from their 19th floor terrace. On a visit in August 1981, I made numerous photos of diesels underwire, as the result of a failure with the early 1900s electrification that had forced Amtrak to tow its normally electrically hauled trains with diesels.

In this photo, one of Amtrak’s few remaining EMD E8As hauls a then-new AEM-7 electric and train eastward toward New Haven.

At the center of image is Goose Island.

Exposed using a Leica IIIa with 50mm Sumitar lens.
Enlarged portion of the train showing the diesel and electric locomotives.

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October 25, 1985—Palmer Diamond

This day has always been a special one for me!

On this day 36 years ago, I spent the afternoon making photos at Palmer, Massachusetts.

I exposed this image using my father’s Rollei model T loaded with Kodak VPX (Verichrome Pan) 120-size black & white film that I later processed in Kodak D76 developer.

At that time I was attending Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where I was studying photography and music.

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Take a Note: NHSE at Chester—October 20, 1985.

For many years, I recorded my photographic adventures with detailed note pages that were organized by date and included: time, location and train information, exposure and camera information, and sometimes interesting or noteworthy details of operations.

On October 20, 1985 (36 years ago today) I was working with my father’s Rolleiflex Model T in tandem with my Leica 3A, when I pictured Conrail’s NHSE (Cedar Hill Yard, New Haven, Connecticut to Selkirk Yard, New York) ascending the old Boston & Albany grade at milepost 126.4 in Chester, Massachusetts.

At that time the New Haven trains still routinely carried cabooses.

Displayed here are the black & white photo exposed with the Rollei with 645-size insert (note notches for ‘Super Slide’ format). I was using Kodak Verichrome Pan 120-size film that I’d processed in D-76 developer.

These are among the photos that I plan to show at my talk to the Massachusetts Bay Railroad Enthusiasts on Thursday evening in Malden.

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Open Access at Kralupy

Hey, I didn’t make this up.

On October 14, 2016 during our exploration of the Czech Republic, fellow photographer Denis McCabe and I caught this Metrans Container freight rolling through Kralupy.

I exposed this view as part of a sequence using my FujiFilm XT-1 digital camera.

A Bombardier TRAXX type of electric rolls through Kralupy with a container train in tow.

Kralupy is a busy junction to the north of Prague, wear we witnessed a steady parade of freights.

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Caboose at the Diamond—August 1982

Working with my old Leica IIIA loaded with Kodak black & white, I made this trailing view of a former Pennsylvania Railroad caboose at the back of an eastward Conrail freight on the old Boston & Albany at Palmer, Massachusetts.

The institution of the caboose on American freight trains was still going strong in August 1982. But within just a couple of years, cabooses on mainline through freights would become scarce.

Changes in technology and crew reforms accelerated by the Staggers Act of 1980 facilitated the elimnation of the caboose on most freight trains by the late 1980s. Conrail began eliminating cabooses on through freights on B&A route in April 1984.

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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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Frankenstein Foliage

Yesterday, I made this image of the Mountaineer descending at the Arethusa Falls grade crossing against a backdrop of autumnal foliage and the famous Frankenstein Cliff in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

A shaft of sun illuminated the front of GP35 216 which made for a tricky exposure.

I’d preset the camera settings in manual mode, anticipating the bright yellow front of the engine catching the wink of sun. Further adjustment of highlight and shadow areas was necessary in post processing.

Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera with 24-70mm Nikkor zoom lens. NEF Raw file adjusted in Adobe Lightroom.

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Tips and Technique

Digital Dawn—November 8, 2008

On November 8, 2008, Chris Guss lent me his Canon 50D and we explored the greater Chicago rail scene making photos.

It was one of my earliest experiments with digital photography.

I made this photo of Chicago Metra commuter trains tied up at Kenonsha, Wisconsin.

About a year later I finally acquired my first digital camera.

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Tips and Technique

CSX on Velvia

May 4, 2007, I was just back from England. Not yet over my jet lag, I drove in the Berkshires of Massachusetts to photograph CSX freights on the former Boston & Albany.

I made this view west of the rock cut at milepost 129, on the 1912 line relocation between Chester and Middlefield, Massachusetts.

A westward freight was led by an SD70MAC.

I’d exposed the photo using my Contax G2 rangefinder loaded with Fujichrome Velvia 50.

Although Velvia is an extraordinarily sharp film that offers tremendous dynamic range and deep rich colors, I’ve often found this to be difficult emulsion to expose properly.

The original slide is about 1/2 stop under exposed, which means its a bit too dark.

To correct for this flaw, I scanned the original using an Epson V750 flatbed scanner and imported the scan into Adobe Lightroom where I lightened the midtones, adjusted shadows, and corrected the color balance to compensate for excessive red/magenta in the processed chrome.

Below is the unadjusted scan (for comparison) and two versions of the corrected slide scan.

My unadjusted scan for comparison. This image is too dark and sufferes from a strong red/magenta bias.
This my first color corrected and exposure adjusted image.
My final adjusted scan. Notice the juxtoposition of the clouds with the shadowed bushes on the lower right. Both are key elements to my composition aimed to augment the dynamics of the locomotives.

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