Back on April 3, 2020, I exposed a handful of photographs on Kodak Tri-X (ISO 400) at the old Grand Trunk Railway station in Gorham, New Hampshire.
This was on a photo adventure in the White Mountains with Kris Sabbatino.
Last month I processed the film using specially tailored split development by first soaking the film in a very dilute HC110 solution, then using a more active solution of ID11. After stop, and dual fixing baths, I washed the film, rinsed in permawash, and washed for a full ten minutes before toning the still wet negatives in a selenium solution for 7 minutes. After rewashing, and drying, I cut the negatives and stored them in archival polypropylene sleeves.
Yesterday, I scanned them using an Epson V600 flatbed scanner powered by Epson software.
During October’s Cobh Rambler tour, I made these views at Cork’s Kent Station on Kodak Tri-X black & white film.
The tour was operated by Railway Preservation Society of Ireland in conjunction with Irish Rail.
Kent’s curved Victorian train shed makes for a fascinating venue to photograph a modern railway in action, while the inclement weather on the day translated well with the traditional media.
I processed the film using a customized split development process consisting of Kodak HC110 presoak mixed 1-200 followed by primary development using Ilford ID11 1-1. The negatives were scanned using an Epsom V500 flatbed scanner with some minor final adjustment using Lightroom.
I was driving from Madison, Wisconsin to Roanoke, Virginia on October 25, 2002.
I stopped at Cincinnati to make photographs of Fellheimer & Wagner’s art deco masterpiece: Cincinnati Union Station, a railway station inspired by Helsinki’s Main Station.
This was among the photos I made on Fuji Acros 100 using my Contax G2 rangefinder fitted with the super wide-angle flat-field 16mm Hologon. I featured this station in my book Depots, Stations & Terminals, published by Voyageur Press.
Gare Luxembourg is Luxembourg’s primary passenger railway hub. This impressive station hosts trains from Belgium, France and Germany as well as those from Luxeumbourg’s own railway, known by the initials CFL .
CFL is the abbreviation for the state railway undertaking;
Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois.
CFL has textbook perfect track; and from my brief experience its trains were clean and operated to time.
Gare Luxembourg is a wonderful example of classic Golden Age railway station architecture that has been tastefully modernized in the latest European styles.
Luxembourg is among the countries featured in my book; Brian Solomon’s Railway Guide to Europe. See Kalmbach Hobby Store:
Lots of people of have made photos at the station in Santa Fe, NewMexico.
I made this one from the window of the train at Santa Fe, Mexico, 200 km south of Mexico City.
Forty years ago, my uncle Mark and I were on an adventure. My old Leica 3A was loaded with Kodachrome and with it I made a scant few interesting images of the Mexican railways, of which this is one.
Many Portuguese railway stations are decorated with elaborate blue tile murals. These are considered national treasures.
Santarem station is a wonderful example and features more than a dozen unique murals. This is a busy station on the Lisbon-Porto mainline and makes for a great place to watch and photograph trains.
On the day we visited it was overcast, which aided exposing photos of the murals under the canopy of the station that may have been shadowed on a sunny day.
Photos exposed in March using FujiFilm and Lumix digital cameras.
Sunday morning 10 March 2019, I paid another visit to the old Midland Great Western terminus at Broadstone in Dublin.
You have to admit the name is cool. Broadstone just sounds like something substantial in a medieval way.
Anyway, this old Dublin railway terminal has served as a bus depot (garage) for decades, and in recent years has been nearly encircled by the new LUAS Green Line Cross City tram route.
Continued landscaping has much improved the grounds around the old railway station.
I had almost an hour at 30thStreet Station, Philadelphia while waiting for Amtrak 94 from Washington.
This magnificent former Pennsylvania Railroad Station offers a mix of classical and modern railroading.
Wandering with my ‘new’ Lumix LX7, I made this selection of hand-held digital photographs.
Of special interest was the old Solari board used to display arrival and departure information. This was under repair/adjustment. I’ve heard that it may be soon retired.
The old Belfast & Northern Counties Railway Derry Station is adjacent to the contemporary Translink/NI Railways’ station.
Where the modern station is a functional utilitarian facility with all the charm of a small town bus station, the old station sits as an elegant vestige of former times when a railway station was viewed as a city gateway and endowed with suitable architecture.
Maybe someday the old station building will be a station again?
I don’t recall the first time I visited the old Rutland Station at Chester. It was in the Steamtown-era and lost in the fog of my earliest memories.
I do recall watching Canadian Pacific steam locomotives run around the excursion train here in the days before I regularly made photos.
Yes, there was a time when I didn’t always carry a camera.
Those days ended on my tenth birthday when Pop gave me my own Leica IIIa.
That camera rests on the shelf waiting to be repaired. In recent years I’ve been playing with identical IIIa bodies of the same period (late 1930s).
Here are a few views of Chester exposed with various cameras on June 7, 2017.
The details are in the captions. Any favorites?
Lumix LX7 view in the morning at Chester.
Lumix LX7 view in the morning at Chester.
Leica IIIa with 35mm Nikkor lens on Fomapan 100.
Leica IIIa with 35mm Nikkor lens on Fomapan 100.
Leica IIIa with 35mm Nikkor lens on Fomapan 100. Afternoon view with VRS 263 in the distance.
Leica IIIa with 35mm Nikkor lens on Fomapan 100.
Leica IIIa with 35mm Nikkor lens on Fomapan 100.
Vermont Rail System freight 264 heading north (west) toward Rutland approaches Chester. Exposed using a FujiFilm XT1 digital camera with 18-135mm zoom lens.
Last week I visited Geneva, Switzerland where I made these photographs.
For the station building, I worked with my Lumix LX7. While the SNCF train was photographed using my FujiFilm X-T1.
Geneva, April 2017. Exposed on a cold morning using a Lumix LX7. Here I’ve tired to integrate the station with the street environment around it. Compare this view with the one below that focuses more on the building.
The great length of Geneva’s station makes it difficult to capture in one image. In this view I’ve cropped much of the building and my use of a wide angle lens has led to some dramatic distortion.
Here I’ve oriented my Lumix vertically to capture the interior of the concourse and ticket area. My purchase of Swiss passes at the offices at the right cost me more than my Lumix did three years ago. Yet the passes were well worth the cost, as the Swiss railway network is one of the finest in the world.
The tracks at Geneva are elevated. This platform view of an SNCF train was made using my FujiFilm X-T1 digital camera. Although the locomotive is back lit, its silver and lavender paint photographed well.
I exposed these photos of Irish Rail’s former Midland & Great Western Railway station at Ballinsloe in January 2000. At the time, Fujichrome Sensia II (100 ISO) was my standard colour slide film.
Crisp winter sun made for excellent lighting to feature this stone building.
Often when I seek places to photograph, variety is a goal. In other words, I’m not just looking for a steady parade, but also lots of different kinds of trains.
Railways in Czech Republic offer great variety. One of my favorite lines is the route that connects Děčín (in the northern part of the country near the German frontier) with Kolin (an important junction 60 kilometers east of Prague).
This secondary route bypasses the Czech capital and serves as a reasonably busy freight corridor. I’d photographed this line at various locations in 2009 using color slide film
On 14 October 2016, Denis McCabe and I re-visited the line and spent an hour and half at the rural station in Stará Boleslav, located in the Labe River Vallay across from Brandys nab Labem.
The building was a tired but classic structure with lots of character. In addition to mainline action we were entertained by a man unloading some coal wagons for local delivery.
We arrived by local passenger train and departed with the next scheduled eastward local.
Below is a selection of images I exposed digitally with my FujiFilm X-T1 and processed with Lightroom to improve contrast, color balance and color saturation.
At 4:05 pm a westward local paused for a station stop with a specially painted electric.
4:06pm. Carloads of coal were being unloaded for local delivery.
4:16 pm. A westward CD Cargo coal train glides through.
4:20pm. The coal train was immediately followed by this IDS Cargo tank train with an ancient but colorfully painted electric.
At 4:24 pm, on the heals of the tank train was this CD Cargo train of new automobiles.
4:32pm another westward local passenger train makes its stop.
Czech Railways use a blue light for ‘stop’ on their shunting signals.
5:01 pm, a diesel powered maintenance train rattles by eastbound.
5:14pm an electric in one of the older CD liveries leads a coal train eastbound.
5:34pm, our local train approaches as the station master looks on.
Last October (2015), I visited Valenciennes in northern France. I stopped by again a few weeks ago during my April 2016 wanderings in France and Belgium.
In these views I focused on the old Chemin de fer du Nord Station (SNCF’s Gare de Valencienes) and the surrounding environment.
Using my FujiFilm X-T1, I made images that feature the old station as both subject and background. Notice how selective focus and use of light shifts the central interest from the old building to the tram.
Outback of the station, there are, of course, SNCF trains and an impressive array of trackage that make interesting subjects in their own right.
Together, the building, trams, SNCF trains and trackage make for a scene, but one not possible to adequately represent in one image. Thus this myriad collection of images. This is a work in progress.
An SNCF train approaches Gare de Valenciennes.
Tracking the Light posts every day! (Have you noticed?)
One hundred and thirty five years ago, the railway station was key to many communities commerce and communications. It offered the connection to the world.
My 1880 Official Guide is a window on the past. The Boston, Barre & Gardner Railroad (among the companies later melded into the Boston & Maine network) schedule lists three trains a day in each direction stopping at Holden, Massachusetts.
Trains ran from Worcester to Winchendon stopping at Holden at 8:28 am, 4:15 pm, and 7 pm, and Winchendon to Worcester at 9:06 am, 1:22 pm, and 7 pm.
Obviously based on this schedule, there was a planned meet between northward and southward trains at the station.
In its heyday, back in 1880 Holden was an important station. It served as a telegraph office and as a transfer point for stagecoaches to Rutland (Massachusetts).
Today the old station is but a relic, the vestige of another time. Its train order signal is no longer part of the rules of operation; and the last passenger train passed in 1953. Yet the railroad remains active.
The old Boston & Maine station at Holden is a reminder of earlier times. Exposed with a FujiFilm X-T1 digital camera.
Providence & Worcester’s freights connect with Pan Am Railways/Pan Am Southern at Gardner and this has developed as a route for the movement of new automobiles and ethanol moving via the port of Providence, Rhode Island.
Providence & Worcester’s southward freight symbol GRWO shakes the walls of the old station. Don’t wait here for a 4-4-0 with combine coach on the 4:15 pm train to Winchendon. (It doesn’t run any more).
My book, Railway Depots, Stations & Terminals features a variety of railway stations in New England, across America and around the world. It was published by Voyageur Press this year and is available from Amazon and other outlets.
My recently published Railway Depots, Stations & Terminals highlights railway architecture around the world, including Helsinki, Tokyo, and London.
As an author, I always like to add a personal touch to my books, and when possible include items of local and special interest. If you scour my pages, you’ll often find photos made in Palmer, Massachusetts and Dublin, among other favorites.
Among the topics covered in the recent effort is a small section on the former Boston & Albany station at East Brookfield, Massachusetts. I’d photographed and researched this building over the years. Sadly, it was destroyed in an arsonist attack five years ago.
This photo of the East Brookfield station was one of the first images I made with my new Panasonic LX3 digital camera. I was testing the camera (which I’d bought to use as a light meter) on a bright October morning in 2009. There were two eastward CSXT freights coming and I was trying to gauge the light. CSXT had just recently put a new roof on the old building. Less than a year after I made this view it succumbed to fire. This photo is reproduced on page 83 of my book.
On Pages 82 and 83, I discuss East Brookfield and its demise as part of greater story on lost stations. In my text, I mention that a period photo of the old station still hangs in East Brookfield Pizza, a few blocks from CSXT’s former B&A mainline.
My friend Dennis LeBeau has helped preserve East Brookfield’s history, and has a collection of glass plate negatives exposed by William Bullard, a local photographer working from the 1890s through the World War I era. Several Bullard photos appear in the book.
The other day, I called into East Brookfield to give Dennis his contributor’s copy of Railway Depots, Stations & Terminals. We went down to East Brookfield Pizza to show the owners and staff the book, and I had Dennis and company pose with the Bullard photo of the station.
On October 30, 2015, Dennis LeBeau holds his signed copy of Railway Depots, Stations & Terminals at East Brookfield Pizza where the old William Bullard photo that he supplied to the restaurant hangs on the wall. The restaurant and the photo get a mention in my book.
I exposed this view the other day. It shows the Keith Block and the site of the old station.
Tracking the Light presents three photos: a Classic station and a short freight.
Pat Yough and I arrived at the grade crossing in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania just as the gates came down. Lucky me! My goal was to photograph the old Reading Company station for a new book I’m putting together. This was a bonus.
I’d only just arrived in Tamaqua a few minutes before exposing this image. I’d never before been to this Pennsylvania town, so when the gates came down, it was a matter of jumping out and looking around as the train approached. Fuji X-T1 with 18-55mm lens.
Acting quickly, I positioned myself for a few images. Since, I’d never been to Tamaqua before, I didn’t have much time to find photographic angles. Luckily the train stopped, which gave us time to expose a few more photos.
Puddles make for great reflective tools! Reading & Northern local freight at Tamaqua, Pennsylvania.
I positioned Pat Yough’s X-T1 on a tripod and waited for dusk—one of my favorite times to photograph old railway stations. Tamaqua’s classic Italianate style structure was decorated for the season. Daylight white balance.
After the short freight departed we waited for dusk to make night shots of the station, which was my original plan.
Tracking the Light Presents a classic railway station.
Exposed with a Panasonic Lumix LX7 in December 2014. Daylight white balance at dusk.
New Hope & Ivyland’s station at New Hope, Pennsylvania at the end of a former Reading Company branch; I exposed this view as part of sequence for a book on railway stations that I’m working on for Voyageur Press.
November Views of a Station; Get Your Photos Soon, Before its Too Late!
Brookfield, Massachusetts; Brookfield, Illinois, and now Brookfield, Wisconsin—Have you noticed a theme?
Classic old wooden station at Brookfield, Wisconsin. Exposed with a Canon EOS 7D with 40mm pancake lens.
The former Milwaukee Road passenger station at Brookfield, Wisconsin is located between Canadian Pacific’s main tracks at the west end of a grade separation. This unusually situated station has provided a visual link to the railroad’s past for many years, and is one of the last structures of the old order along this line.
Today, Canadian Pacific’s former Milwaukee Road mainline between Chicago and the Twin Cities is largely free from historical infrastructure. The days of an agent working at Brookfield have long since passed. Neither passenger trains nor freights have stopped here in decades. Yet, as of today, the old building survives at its traditional location.
Here’s some advice: get your photos NOW. Don’t wait. Word on the street is that the station will soon be either moved or demolished.
Looking east at Brookfield, Wisconsin. Lumix LX3 photo.
And even if the street gossip changes its tune, the reality is that old wooden railroad stations are ephemeral structures: Never assume the old station that has always stood there, will be there the next time you return.
I made these photos last week while re-exploring southern Wisconsin with Pat Yough and Chris Guss . Back in the 1990s, I made a number of photos of this old station, but I’ve learned you can never have too many images of something (or someone) once its gone.
Might the old station be preserved? Quite possibly, but it won’t be trackside, and thus will have lost its context. This location without the station will just be another characterless wide-spot along the line. Someone might call this ‘progress’; I call it ‘change’.
On Saturday November 9, 2013, I worked with three cameras and photographed the Brookfield station from a variety of angles as the sun came in and out of the clouds. Two eastward Canadian Pacific freights passed giving me ample opportunity to put the old station in context.
A wink of sun illuminates the former Milwaukee Road station at Brookfield, Wisconsin. Lumix LX3 photo.
Canadian Pacific eastward freight 484-08 led by Norfolk Southern 9189 passes Brookfield, Wisconsin. Canon EOS 7D photo.
The sun catches eastward Canadian Pacific freight 248-408 at Brookfield, Wisconsin on November 9, 2013. Canon EOS 7D with 20mm lens.
On the Morning of October 25, 2009, I brought my brand new Lumix LX3 out for a test run. I had just received my first digital camera and this was a trial to see if it was any good.
I’d bought it on the recommendation of Eric Rosenthal. My initial hope for the camera was to use as a light meter and to make photos of friends.
East Brookfield, Massachusetts looking west on October 25, 2009—four years ago.
That morning I drove to East Brookfield and made this image of the old Boston & Albany station. Two eastward trains came by and I photographed those on film, not trusting the new purchase for anything important.
I later drove around making photos of local architecture in the autumn color. I soon found that the LX3 was an extremely powerful tool capable of very sharp images and useful for making a great variety of railway photos.
Approximately 11 months later, I received a phone call from Dennis LeBeau of the East Brookfield Historic Society: the station had been torched by vandals and gutted. For another year or so the skeletal remains of the building remained trackside as a sad reminder of what had been.
This Lumix image is exactly four years old today. In the interval, since I made this image I’ve released the LX3’s shutter more than 15,000 times.
At one time, just about every town in North America had at least one railway station. Tens of thousands of station buildings dotted the continent. Most were small. Often railroads would have their bridge and building departments draft standard station plans of various sizes and apply these where appropriate.
Steward’s former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy is a reminder of former times when passenger trains served this rural village. Exposed with a Nikon F3T with 24mm Nikkor lens on Fujichrome slide film.
Steward, Illinois is a village on the former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy several miles east of Rochelle (where the CB&Q crossed the Chicago & North Western). It has been many years since this small standard-plan station hosted trains. It survives as a tie to the era when the railroad was the town’s lifeline to the outside world.
The May 1949 Official Guide of the Railways lists CB&Q train 52 stopping here at 7:32 am eastbound, and train 49 stopping at 10:51 pm westbound, while a mixed train could make a stop on request (no time listed).
Now the station has little to do with the main line running nearby. Dozens of BNSF Railway long distance freights pass daily. There are no passenger trains on this route—not since Amtrak assumed most long distance passenger services in 1971. But Steward probably had lost its local train long before then.
Broadstone Station, Dublin greets the new millennium. Rollei Model T with f3.5 75mm Zeiss Tessar lens.
Broadstone Station was the Dublin terminus of Ireland’s Midland & Great Western Railway. This enigmatic railway was built west from Dublin parallel to the suffering Royal Canal, and Broadstone Station was located adjacent to the existing Royal Canal basin in the north city center. M&GWR was among lines consolidated as Great Southern Railways in 1924, a move that sealed the fate of Broadstone; it was closed as a passenger terminal in 1936 (although tracks remained for freight services into the 1970s). The buildings survive as a Dublin Bus depot (garage). The old canal basin was filled in many years ago and is now car park. The canal bridge that once spanned the road adjacent to the station is remembered in period photos on the walls of neighborhood pubs. Soon rails will return to Broadstone in the form of a LUAS light rail extension.
Broadstone Station is a vestige of Irish railways long gone. The station was executed in an Egyptian revival style and completed in 1850. I find the building fascinating, yet difficult to photograph because it is hemmed in by the five inhibitors of urban railway photography: pavement, walls, fences, wires and unkempt brush. On a weekday, cars and buses surround the old structure, which lend to ironic images of a grand decayed station encircled by transport modes that contributed to its redundancy. Making a simple image that captures the grandeur of the station isn’t easy. Here are two of my efforts: one was made with my old Rollei Model T on 120 size black & white film on January 3, 2000. I exposed the other digitally last Tuesday afternoon (February 19, 2013) using my Canon 7D and 40mm pancake lens.
Dublin’s Broadstone Station, February 19, 2013. Exposed with Canon 7D fitted with 40mm pancake lens.
