Just one more week until my 7pm illustrated program featuring more than 6 decades of photography of Philadelphia’s Trains and Trolleys.
This will held by the Philadelphia Chapter NRHS at the Elkins Park SEPTA station on June 19th.
I will include a variety of photographs. Many of them are from mine and my father’s archives, including this December 31, 2016 view looking west on Girard Avenue.
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Photographing streetcars (trams) with a long telephoto presents a visual quandary.
The compression effect offered by the lens can be used to help separate the car from other traffic, while presenting an interesting background. However, the same effect will also compress the streetcar, making an already short vehicle appear even shorter.
Working with my f2.8 70-200mm Nikkor Z-series telephoto zoom, I made these photos of a SEPTA light rail car working east on State Street in Media. This car was on its return run toward 69th Street in Upper Darby. Less than 20 minutes earlier, I’d photographed this car on its outward run, and that image was featured on Tracking the Light a few days ago.
By using a wide aperture, I was afforded shallow depth of field which helps the viewer separate the car from its environment.
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This is not a class. It’s a streetcar!
My first visit to Media, Pa., was more than 45 years ago. On that trip, my family rode from the 69th Street Terminal in Upper Darby on a December evening in a vintage Brilliner trolley car. At the time the car was more than 40 years old. I’d made an underexposed Kodachrome slide of the car in the inky darkness
Kris and I made a Media visit in January. On this adventure I caught one of SEPTA’s early 1980s-vintage Kawasaki Cars working the single track line on State Street in midday sun.
SEPTA has plans to retire these relics in another few years, and I was happy to make a few digital photo of this car.
More Media photos will follow over the coming days.
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A warm July Sunday along the Main Line found us near SEPTA’s Wynnewood Station, PA.
I made this coming and going sequence of an inbound SEPTA Silverliner V using my Z6 with 24-70mm Nikkor Z-series zoom.
The trees along the former Pennsylvania Railroad made for nice framing elements in the trailing view.
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Last month, Kris and I paused at Bryn Mawr, that iconic place on the former Pennsy Main Line.
Here vestiges of the old order survive. The railroad is still comprised of directional four track. The old PRR catenary and support infrastructure is still being used as intended. Classic canopies cover the platforms. And the old PRR tower survives like a citadel from the days of yore.
An automated announcement advised passengers of late running trains.
Bad for them, but good for me. If SEPTA’s outbound train to Thorndale had been on time, I’d have missed my photograph!
I had just a few minutes before we had to leave to meet family in Ardmore for a dinner.
Photos exposed with my Nikon Z6 and processed digitally in Lightroom.
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Several nights ago, Kris and I delivered my brother Sean and his partner Isabelle to SEPTA’s Paoli, Pennsylvania station on the old Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line.
It had been quite a few years since my last visit and in the interval, the station had been modernized.
It now has high-level platforms and bright daylight balanced LED lighting.
As Sean & Isabelle waited for an eastward Amtrak Keystone to bring them to Philadelphia, I exposed a series of photos of passing trains.
Details of the exposures are in the captions. All files adjusted using Adobe Lightroom.
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On November 10, 2017, my brother Sean and I traveled on SEPTA to Norristown, Pennsylvania.
At Elm Street Station, I made these photos of SEPTA Silverliner 4 electric multiple units in the blue light of dusk using my Lumix LX7.
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Five years ago today (July 10, 2017), I traveled on SEPTA to the old Reading Company station at Chestnut Hill (now Chestnut Hill East) where I made this selection of photos using my Lumix LX7.
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June 2, 2014—Eight years ago, I made this photo of a number 34 Trolley working on Baltimore Avenue in Philadelphia .It was a sunny warm day.
I was working my trusty Canon 7D with 40mm pancake lens.
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In December 2014 on a blitz of SEPTA’s rail transit in Philadelphia with my brother Sean, I made this view of the Broad Street Subway at the Girard Avenue stop.
My feeling is that SEPTA’s Broad Street Subway is among the least photographed rail transit lines in the Northeastern United States.
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Brian Solomon is traveling ‘off the grid’ and this post was prepared several days ago.
In August 1980, on the return from Los Angeles, my family and I visited Philadelphia for a few days.
This was the view from our hotel room.
Working with my vintage Leica 3A rangefinder, I exposed this photo of an inbound SEPTA PCC car working the No. 10 route as it approached the Trolley subway portal off 36th street.
I was working with Kodachrome 64 slide film. The window glass and summer haze contributed to a cyan tint.
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In October 2001, my brother Sean and I visited Norristown, Pennsylvania to photograph SEPTA’s Route 100, known as the Norristown High Speed Line. Here it crossed the Schuylkill Valley on a long steel viaduct.
It was a bright clear day, and I made these views on Fujichrome using my Contax G2 rangefinder from a vantage point the north bank of the river. On the walk back from the river, I stepped squarely in some deep mud.
Until the early 1990s, SEPTA operated distinctive Brill ‘Bullet Cars’ on this route. My dad still calls SEPTA’s current fleet as ‘the new cars’, even though at this point most are now the better part of 30 years old!
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