Tag Archives: #RDC

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Lehigh Valley 40 Sunburst

A beautiful autumn sunset made for a perfect situation to photograph Lehigh Valley number 40 which resides at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

In the 1950s, my father rode this car from Jim Thorpe to Hazelton and made several photos of it in revenue service.

Years later, we traveled together on RDCs on former New Haven lines in New England.

One of the former New Haven RDCs later came to New Hampshire’s Conway Scenic Railroad, where I had the opportunity to be qualified as a ‘motorman’, and on several occasions operated the car in revenue service.

In 2022, Kris and I took Conway Scenic Railroad number 23, ‘Millie’, on a spin to Conway, NH., and back for our pre-wedding special with many of our friends and family on board.

Every so often someone tells me that they don’t like Budd RDCs. I dismiss them as daft.

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

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I Shouldn’t Have Been at South Station

In April 1984, the Monson Jr-Sr High School Band had a musical exchange with a school band in Cohasset, Massachusetts.

The day of the joint concert, the 3rd Trombone took a bus to South Braintree, changed for the Red Line, paid a visit to South Station, photographed some former New Haven Railroad RDC’s, took a spin on the Orange Line to Sullivan Square, and eventually arrived back at the concert to play his note.

Unforntunately, karma caught the 3rd trombone, who did a subpar job of processing the Kodak Tri-X exposed on the big adventure.

These days, catching four vintage RDC’s in commuter service would be a major coup.

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RDC’s at Nesquehoning

On our October 5th trip, we were driving back toward Jim Thorpe following the former Central Railroad of Jersey line that now serves as a link between two key portions of the Reading & Northern empire.

As we approached R&N’s new station at Nesquehoning, Pa., where earlier in the day we had photographed steam locomotive 2102 on its eastward journey, we spotted the headlights of a westward train.

It was R&N’s RDC trip returning to Pottsville (via Port Clinton).

I turned the car around, parked, and Kris and I jumped out to make photos. (And Seamus rolled the train by from inside the car).

Pictures taken, we raced after the two-car pocket streamliner, catching it again a few minutes later at Panther Creek.

I’m a big fan of the Budd RDC, so this was a bonus! It was an unexpected delight that added to our wonderful day following trains in coal country.

Grab shot at Nesquehoning; Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm lens.
Reading & Northern’s pair of RDCs passing the Panther Creek location sign. Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm lens.

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RDC at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania

Saturday, October 28, 2023, Kris and I drove to Bellefonte, Pa., to see the first runs of the Bellefonte Historical Railroad Society’s recent restored Budd-RDC.

Bellefonte was hosting its Talleyrand Fall Fest and the traffic around the town was a bit intense. Also tickets for the train ride were completely sold out, so rather than travel on the car we settled on rolling by the RDC at a grade crossing near the station.

The trackage is operated by North Shore Railroad’s Nittany & Bald Eagle and historically was part of the PRR system.

The group’s RDC is car 9167, originally New Haven Railroad number 40, which makes it a sister car to Conway Scenic’s number 23 Millie (originally New Haven number 23), which I’ve often featured on Tracking the Light.

For more about the Bellefonte Historical Railroad Society and their restored RDC see this recent article on the Trains News Wire by Dan Cupper: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/after-18-years-rail-group-resumes-rdc-runs-in-bellefonte-pa/

For the society’s site and ticket information see: https://bellefontetrain.org

I made this sequence of photos using my Nikon Z-series mirrorless camera.

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Millie & Santa Lumix Sequence

Monday, RDC 23 ‘Millie’ made a trip to Conway with a holiday charter.

I was rostered as the ‘motorman’ and so ran the car as per train order.

At Conway, I switched to Marketing-mode and made a series of Millie with Santa and her passengers using a Lumix LX7..

As an excercise in compositional comparison, I’ve posted most of Millie’s Santa sequence, and in order of exposure..

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Vintage Chromes: Amtrak at Meriden, CT.

I made photographs of Amtrak at Meriden, Connecticut on two occasions.

The first was in February 1979. My father brought my brother and me out for the afternoon and we stopped at Meriden’s Amtrak station to watch the arrival of a New Haven-Springfield shuttle operating with a pair of Budd RDC’s. I exposed these coming and going Kodachrome photos with my old Leica 3A. (previously featured on Tracking the Light in 2015. See: http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/2015/05/14/amtrak-rdcs-at-meriden-connecticut-february-1979/)

My second visit was on January 2, 1988, when I stopped at a grade crossing just north of the station to catch a southward holiday extra that was running with F40PH 205 and borrowed MARC passenger cars.

Last night, I was able to place the location 1988 photo by carefully scrutinizing the older slides. The distinctive profiles of the buildings to the left of F40PH 205 also appear in the distance of the trailing view of the RDCs, which is how I know that the 1988 photo shows the train approaching Amtrak’s Meriden station stop.

If you look carefully at the 1988 photo, you can see the conductor standing in a vestibule door. The platforms were at the east side of the tracks for trains in both directions, as evident in the first view of the RDC at the station.

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Millie at Work!

During the relatively quiet days mid-week in November, Conway Scenic has assigned RDC 23 Millie to work Valley Train runs to Conway and Bartlett. This will continue Monday-Thursday until Thanksgiving.

This former is former New Haven RDC 23, that later worked for Penn Central, Amtrak, Metro-North, and Susquehanna

Working with my FujiFilm XT1 digital camera, I made these views on Tuesday November 10, 2020 while the car was in service at North Conway, New Hampshire.

As I’ve been digging through my older photos, I’ve searched for photos of Mille working for one of its former owners, but so far have only found photos of its sister cars.

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Monochrome Millie—Four Photos

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Conway Scenic Railroad’s Budd Company RDC-1 is named ‘Millie’.

A month ago, I organized a training exercise and publicity trip with this single-unit self propelled car.

In addition to digital photos and video, I exposed a few black & white photos of the car in the yard at North Conway.

For these images I used Fomapan 100 Classic loaded in a Nikon F3 with f1.8 50mm lens.

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Spring at the Swift River Truss; Focus, Perspective and Composition—Four photos.

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Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time studying railway imagery, observing and analyzing hundreds of thousands of individual photos.

Among the most striking are the works of Japanese photographers.

Some of their most successful photos cleverly use focus and depth of field to place the railway in its environment. In some situations this is accomplished with a single image; in others with a sequence of photos.

Last week, I emulatted the style embraced by my Japanese counterparts to produce this sequence of images at the Swift River Bridge on Conway Scenic Railroad’s Conway Branch.

Here I’m working with three primary subjects; the truss bridge, Budd rail diesel car Millie and a flowering tree. All were exposed digitally using my FujiFilm XT1 with 18-135mm zoom lens.

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Roger Williams in the Snow.

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In the 1950s, New Haven Railroad worked with the Budd Company to develop a semi-streamlined self-propelled passenger train adapted from the successful Budd Rail Diesel Car—RDC for service as the Roger Williams.

The ends of the train featured a distinctive nose-section.

I recall these end cars working Amtrak’s Springfield, Mass., to New Haven, Connecticut shuttles in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

A couple of weeks ago on a business trip to Lincoln, New Hampshire, I saw that the Hobo Railroad has this portion of the old ‘Roger Williams’ RDC on display. I took a couple of minute to make a few photos. Someday I’d like to return for a more thorough documentation.

Exposed using my FujiFilm XT1 with 18-135mm lens.

Fresh snow made for a monochromatic setting with the bold New Haven logo.

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