In the June 2024 Trains Magazine, photographer Eric Williams has an intriguing photo essay on ‘Railroad Streets.’
Following this theme, last week, I made these photos on South Railroad Avenue in New Holland, Pennsylvania.
Road traffic is light in the early evening, which made for a good time for New Holland vignettes. Unfortunately, catching a train here has proved elusive for me. I’ve seen Norfolk Southern’s local working this end of the branch a few times, but thus far I’ve not had the opportunity to picture it on the crossing.
Nikkor Z-series 70-200mm zoom set to 200mmNikkor Z-series 70-200mm zoom set to 175mm
Yesterday (September 3, 2022), Kris and I stopped in at Conway, NH to observe the arrival of the morning train led by steam locomotive 7470.
This is the last weekend of regularly scheduled steam service for the summer season and I wanted to make a few photos and catch up with steam locomotive engineer Wayne Duffett.
I made these photos of the 7470 and crew at Conway using my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm Z-series zoom. By working with the variable focal length telephoto I was able to quickly compose images of the crew and their locomotive.
All images were exposed in the NEF (RAW) format, imported into Adobe Lightroom for adjustment, and exported as JPGs for internet display.
In 1990, I’d bought a second-hand F4 Nikkor ‘prime’ 200mm telephoto. For several years I made great use of this lens to photograph trains across the West.
Through the 1990s, my photography was telephoto heavy.
These days, I’ve shifted my focal length wide.
Most of my digital photos are made with focal lengths between 16-70mm (super wide to short telephoto).
But, when I tend toward the longer telephoto range, I still reach for my film cameras.
Partially because I have several excellent long telephotos for my Canons, but also because when I think ‘long’, I think film.
So when Kris Sabbatino and I visited the Junction at ‘East Northfield,’ Massachusetts on March 8th (2021), I made this long view on Ektachrome using my old Canon EOS-3 with f2.8 200mm lens. This winning camera-lens combo has served me well for nearly 15 years.
Perhaps, it helps that I’m photographing a classic train with 1960s-1970s vintage EMD diesels bracketed by searchlight signals.
New England Central southward 611 approaches the junction at East Northfield, Massachusetts on March 8, 2021. Ektachrome 100 slide film.
