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New York Central Transformed—Rochester, New York 1986.

September 14, 2020 brian solomon Leave a comment

On the afternoon of September 12, 1986, I exposed this photograph of a westward Conrail double-stack container train on the former New York Central Waterlevel Route passing the Amtrak Station at Rochester, New York.

The old New York Central era tower was still standing, and the station platforms, complete with the old ‘Rochester’ signs dated from the New York Central era.

In the lead was a twenty-year old former New York Central GP40, and I was just short of my twentieth birthday.

Yet, this double stack train was unlike anything ever seen on the old New York Central. Among the big changes imposed under Conrail was a clearance improvement program that allowed for much taller trains.

Exposed on Kodak black & white film. Negative cropped for presentation here.

My book Conrail and its Predecessors is available from the Kalmbach Hobby Store.

See: https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/product/book/01309

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

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Conrail Classic—SD50s on the move! A grab shot along the old Erie Railroad.

March 12, 2019 brian solomon Leave a comment

On May 2, 1987, Doug Eisele and I spent the day photographing trains on Conrail’s former Erie Railroad.

We been following Conrail TV301, a double-stack train carrying APL containers on a transcontinental land-bridge movement toward the west coast. At the time, the Erie route was preferred for double-stacks.

At Dalton, New York we spotted an eastward Delaware & Hudson stack train carrying Sealand containers. This was crawling along the old Erie eastbound number two track at about 10mph, as Conrail didn’t maintain the eastward track for anything faster than that, and instead preferred to route all movements over the number 1 main.

As the Conrail train was flying along, we pulled over and bailed out the car; and I made this hastily composed photograph with my father’s Rollieflex Model T on Kodak TMY (Tmax 400).

While not a perfect composition, for me this captures the spirit of the moment, and shows the old Erie Railroad alive with heavy freight.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

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BNSF Stack Train at Fullerton, California—November 2018.

November 20, 2018 brian solomon Leave a comment

The triple-track mainline at Fullerton, California is a great place to watch and photograph trains.

In addition to a steady procession of transcontinental container traffic, Amtrak and Metrolink passenger trains operate over the line and make stops at the old Santa Fe station.

Centralized Traffic Control with bi-directional signaling on all three lines allows dispatchers flexibility to route trains in either direction over any mainline track. There are crossovers immediately east of the station platforms.

The challenge of photographing from the pedestrian bridge is navigating the wire mesh. While my Lumix LX7 with its small diameter lens did a better job of getting through the fence, I opted for my Fuji camera because I wanted a longer telephoto lens to bring in the stack train which had stopped on the middle line waiting for a signal.