At times of stress and when sadness threatens to obscure my focus, I’ve often turned to railroad photography as welcome distraction.

The other night on our way back from Fox Meadows Creamery in Leola, Kris suggested we detour via Greenfield Road: “Maybe we’ll see the local freight.”

On our way, we spotted the headlights of a GP38-2 illuminating the catenary masts of the former Pennsylvania Railroad, and sure enough, Norfolk Southern’s night local was making its drop to High Steel Structures.

Burning fusees warned motorists that the train was blocking the road. This job often has locomotives a both ends.

While some of the highway traffic was less than impressed by seeing the freight at work, we were delighted. I made a selection of photos using my FujiFilm XT1 with 12mm Touit. Although I had my tripod, I opted to make these photos handheld using high ISO. I converted the Fuji RAW RAW files in to DNG format using DxO PureRaw, then cropped and adjusted contrast, color and exposure in Adobe Lightroom.

Later, I exposed a few photos with my Lumix LX7, but I’ll save those for a later post.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!