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This is the Beginning Not the End.

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So it read on one end of Conrail’s specially painted New England Division caboose.

Ironically, on this day that ‘end’ of the caboose that was facing inward toward the freight cars.

I made these photos at the end of the day at Tennyville in Palmer, Massachusetts.

The freight was Conrail’s PWSE (Providence & Worcester to Selkirk).

These were among my reticulated negatives in my lost photo file described in detail in yesterday’s post (see: Conrail-Visions from another era.) They were exposed in Spring 1984.

Conrail’s one of a kind New England Division Caboose spent a couple years on the Boston & Albany in the mid-1980s. Sometime after Division Supt E.C. Cross retired it was sent west to New York State where it became the Buffalo Division Caboose. I have more photos of it out there. Most of them sharper than these.
Conrail’s one of a kind New England Division Caboose spent a couple years on the Boston & Albany in the mid-1980s. Sometime after Division Supt E.C. Cross retired it was sent west to New York State where it became the Buffalo Division Caboose. I have more photos of it out there. Most of them sharper than these.
Interestingly, my unintentional and inept processing of the negatives resulted in producing better tonality in the sky. This was at the expense of sharpness and granular uniformity however.
Interestingly, my unintentional and inept processing of the negatives resulted in producing better tonality in the sky. This was at the expense of sharpness and granular uniformity however.
Palmer, Massachusetts in the Spring of 1984.
Looking west at Palmer, Massachusetts in the Spring of 1984.
If you look carefully, you can spot the headlight of PWSE's headend working Palmer yard to make a pick up.
If you look carefully, you can spot the headlight of PWSE’s headend working Palmer yard to make a pick up. That’s the old Route 32 bridge over the tracks  in the distance.

Interestingly, my unintentionally inept processing of the negatives resulted in producing better tonality in the sky. This was at the expense of sharpness and granular uniformity however.

For more than 30 years these negatives were stored unlabeled in a white envelope.

I scanned them last week; and using digital post-processing techniques I was able to adjust the contrast to partially compensate for the damage in processing.

©Brian Solomon 582668
I featured this caboose in my first book on American railroad cabooses authored with John Gruber and published by MBI.

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