{"id":5115,"date":"2014-01-04T04:46:08","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T09:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=5115"},"modified":"2014-01-01T00:58:06","modified_gmt":"2014-01-01T05:58:06","slug":"daily-post-packing-friction-bearings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/daily-post-packing-friction-bearings\/","title":{"rendered":"DAILY POST: Packing Friction Bearings."},"content":{"rendered":"

A Bit of History on Film.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Does anyone even remember friction bearings? By the 1990s, these were all but a forgotten technology, replaced with the omnipresent roller bearings. Southern Pacific\u2019s season sugar beet racks were once of the few exceptions and continued to work until about 1992 with the old technology.<\/p>\n

However, prior to that in January 1988, I had a class project at the Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, New York) that involved making photos of railroad workers. I\u2019d arranged through the Rochester & Southern to spend time around Brooks Avenue Yard.<\/p>\n

I spent a lot of time there, relative to what was required of me for the class.<\/p>\n

\"Railroad<\/a>
Packing friction bearings on freight cars at Brooks Avenue Yard, Rochester, New York, January 1988.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At one point the general manager, or someone in the know, directed me to a rip track where workers were packing friction bearings. This was really an arcane aspect of railroading.<\/p>\n

I exposed a series of black & white negatives in the 645 format using my father\u2019s Rolleiflex Model T. It was a dull cold day. I think I was using Verichrome Pan (rated at 80 ISO) to get a period effect. I used a wide aperture, probably f3.5, which gave me shallow depth of field.<\/p>\n

Verichrome was a difficult material to work with in low light and my negatives were very thin.<\/p>\n

To make the most of these photos I used an unusual printing technique: I intentionally printed the photo darker than normal, then used a potassium-ferrocyanide solution to bleach the highlights. I did this both across the print in a tray, and using a cotton swab on select areas such as the around the journal boxes.<\/p>\n

The result is more or less as you see it here. This print has been in a box since 1988 and has hardly ever seen the light of day. (Incidentally, in case the name doesn’t suggest it to you,\u00a0potassium-ferrocyanide is decidedly unhealthy, so use it cautiously, if you must.)<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think my professor was especially impressed with my results. What did he know about bearings anyway?<\/p>\n

Tracking the Light<\/a>\u00a0posts new material\u00a0every\u00a0morning.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please spread the word and share\u00a0Tracking the Light<\/a>\u00a0with anyone who may enjoy seeing it!<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Bit of History on Film. Does anyone even remember friction bearings? By the 1990s, these were all but a forgotten technology, replaced with the omnipresent roller bearings. Southern Pacific\u2019s season sugar beet racks were once of the few exceptions and continued to work until about 1992 with the old technology. However, prior to that … Continue reading DAILY POST: Packing Friction Bearings.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[10],"tags":[1830,1827,1829,854,219,7,1831,1828,5,977,1222,1652,385,1648,200],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/RS_Brooks_Ave_Yard_packing_Bearings_c1988_Brian-Solomon-2346391.jpg?fit=1060%2C788","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-1kv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115"}],"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=5115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5118,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115\/revisions\/5118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}