Pictures in Chard Walkers Article in Trains, Jan 2004

Hi guys,

The pictures in Chard Walker’s article just look amazing. I was wondering if any post processing was done to get the colors to look like they were taken yesterday. Also, and this is kinda silly, I think he captured a “star trail” of Saturn in his picture on pages 54 and 55 (in the upper left). I am also into Astronomy and for fun, I brought up a planetarium software program, set it to November 18th, 1964 for about the location of Summit, and sure enough, Saturn is right about there. (WSW almost right above the tracks which appear to turn about WSW from the map a couple pages earlier).

Anyways, amazing pictures!!!

Jason Hissong

It’s funny you should bring that up. Just this evening I was sitting in a restaurant reading that article while waiting for my food. The picture said it was taken at 10PM. How do you get blue sky that late at night? Was that lens really, really wide open for a long, long time?

Yep. With a full moon like that, you would get a blue sky with the exposure long enough.

They’re straight scans from the original slides. There’s the usual color-correction (that is done with practically every scan), because film varies. But that’s it.

My snail mail runs slow around here but I look forward to each new issue of Trains.
stay safe
Joe

…Yes, and I’m looking forward to the 2nd part of the feature in the next issue.

That article was my favorite one of the issue! I agree that those pictures were spectacular. It’s always great to see coloured pictures of trains from that era. I’m really looking forward to the second part.