Twenty-seven years ago, my father and I drove to Amsterdam, New York, to begin our epic two-day final photo shoot of Conrail. Twenty-three years earlier, at the end of March 1976, Pop and I had spent two days photographing New York-area railroads on the eve of Conrail.
At Guy Park, west of Amsterdam on the old Water Level Route, we watched the evening parade. Working with a Canon EOS Elan fitted with a 75–300mm Canon zoom lens (lent to me by Canon), I framed this view of an eastward multilevel freight catching the setting sun’s glint below the 177 automatic signals.
Last night, I improved a scan of the original slide using Lightroom, darkening the shadow areas to accentuate the reflections, make the glint more pronounced, and increase the drama of the moment.
I’m impressed by the way the Canon lens and Fujichrome film successfully captured the clear signal’s green aspect on the signal bridge. In my film days, I often struggled to photograph clear signals, which tended to overexpose in low light.
50 years after its creation, Tracking the Light marks the passage of Conrail—long live Big Blue!
