{"id":44340,"date":"2026-05-28T06:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=44340"},"modified":"2026-05-27T22:09:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T02:09:59","slug":"27-years-ago-three-days-before-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/27-years-ago-three-days-before-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"27 Years Ago-Three Days Before the End"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2013300mm Canon zoom lens (lent to me by Canon), I framed this view of an eastward multilevel freight catching the setting sun\u2019s glint below the 177 automatic signals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m impressed by the way the Canon lens and Fujichrome film successfully captured the clear signal\u2019s green aspect on the signal bridge. In my film days, I often struggled to photograph clear signals, which tended to overexpose in low light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Conrail on May 28, 1999. A version of this image appeared in Trains Magazine back in 1999.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

50 years after its creation<\/strong>, Tracking the Light marks the passage of Conrail<\/strong>\u2014long live Big Blue!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty-seven years ago, my father and I drove to Amsterdam, New York, to begin our epic two-day final photo shoot of Conrail. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6060,10,6108,48],"tags":[7949,6846,5128,5488],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Conrail_eb_on_NYC_waterlevel_Guy_Park_NY_May28_1999_Canon_EOS\u00a9Brian_Solomon_210831-2.jpg?fit=2048%2C1386","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-bxa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44340"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44342,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44340\/revisions\/44342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}