Tag Archives: #SD40-2

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

CSX Local Freight Along the Hudson

Road switchers are designed for bi-directional operation.

When I was younger, EMD’s running long-hood forward annoyed me.

These days, I think its pretty cool to find a single SD40-2 operating long-hood first.

Last week, we saw CSX 8400 leading a local freight along the River Line in New York’s Hudson River Valley. I made this sequence of images from the Mine Dock Park near Ft Montgomery.

Exposed using my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm Z-series-Nikkor lens. Contrast and saturation adjusted using Adobe Lightroom.

Note the mismatched number boards and the plow profiled for use in 3rd rail territory.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Reflections at Delanson

March 19, 2005: CP Rail freight 412 roars through Delanson, New York on the Delaware & Hudson’s Albany & Susquehanna route.

I was traveling with fellow photographers Tim Doherty and Pat Yough.

We’d strayed off course, having started the morning on the west end of CSX’s old Boston & Albany, and kept pushing west.

I made this image on Fujichrome using a Nikon F3 with Nikkor 180mm telephoto lens.

To make the most of the puddle in the foreground, I took the prism of the camera and held the body close to the water level, while looking down through the fresnel focusing glass. The challenge of this unusual technique is composing the photo in reverse, since without the prism the fresnel projects a mirror image.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

North Reading Fast Freight

Reading & Northern’s North Reading Fast Freight makes an afternoon run from the North Reading Yard to Pittston, Pa.

In October, fellow author & photographer Dan Cupper and I made a project of catching this premium train on the move.

We set up at Reynolds, near South Tamaqua, Pa., where made a series of photos.

Leading the train was the recently repainted SD40-2 number 1983 (former 3062) , that commemorates 40 years of Reading & Northern/Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern operation. This wears a shade of blue remainiscent to that on the railroad’s scheme used on Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern’s CF7s back in the 1980s.

Reading & Northern SD40-2 number 1983 leads symbol freight NRFF (North Reading Fast Freight). Exposed with a Nikon Z6 with Nikkor 70-200mm zoom lens.
Exposed with a Nikon Z7-II with Nikkor 24-70mm zoom lens.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

photography, Tips and Technique

Classic Conrail Kodachrome

This was among the many slides that I scanned yesterday.

In my ongoing effort to scan, archive, and organize my slide collection, I’ve been scanning slides, and reorganizing the original chromes so that they are placed together by similar subject.

Conrail is just one of dozens of my subject categories . Ultimately, I hope to subdivide the Conrail slides in to smaller categories largely based on precursor railroad routes.

This Kodachrome 25 image of a westward Conrail unit coal train was exposed in September 1988 at School Road in Batavia, New York, near milepost 399 on the former New York Central ‘Water Level Route’ main line using my old Leica M2 with 50mm f2.0 Summicron lens.

It is one of hundreds of Conrail photos I exposed between 1985 and 1999 of Conrail trains working the old Water Level Route.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

photography

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.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

Uncategorized

Conrail SD40-2s at MG Tower

Here’s another frame from a roll of 35mm Plus X exposed on a summer 1989 trip to the old Pennsylvania Railroad with my old pal TSH.

Until today, this picture has not seen the light of day.

35mm Plus-X exposed with a Leica M3 and 90mm Elmarite. Negative scanned using a Epson V750 flatbed scanner and digitally processed in Adobe Lightroom.

I processed the film 32 years ago in Kodak D76, sleeved the negatives, and made a select few prints, of which this image was not one of them.

It was a dull day, and I was working with a tight budget, where I saved my Kodachrome for the best shots. What seemed a bit pedestrian in 1989, really captures my attention now.

I like the photo today because it frames the desceding train in the steam-era PRR signal bridges, features the famous MG Tower (recently demolished by Norfolk Southern), and captures the drama of a heavy train bathed in brake shoe smoke. It is an image from another era, now gone.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

photography

Glinty SD40-2

The old McClelland Farm Road Bridge at the west of Guilford Rail System’s East Deerfield Yard was a favorite place to make photos of diesel locomotives.

Back in August 2004, I made this detailed low sun view of CP Rail SD40-2 5857 passing below the ever-popular bridge.

Fujichrome color slide exposed with a Nikon F3 and 180mm telephoto lens.

Tracking the Light is Daily!

Uncategorized

Stone Train at Grand Ave

In the mid-1990s, Wisconsin Central actively pursued traffic to fill its lines with trains.

In this September 1996 photo a former Algoma Central SD40-2 leads a short stone train at Grand Avenue in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

These trains typicallyl ran with a single six-motor diesel and former Canadian National gypsum cars, often make several trips a day over the line.

I made this image using a Nikon F3T with f4.0 200mm Nikkor lens on Kodachrome Film.

Kodachrome’s grain structure permitted superior definition in extreme exposure situations such as the locomotive headlights. Where E6 films and digital media often suffer from poorly defined headlight areas, Kodachrome had a much better ability to retain detail.

Tracking the Light posts Daily!