Hi folks. I’ve finally gotten around to one of the many things I intended to do as a retiree. And that is to whip some of my train pix into shape, and post them were folks can see them.
Please excuse the fact that by railfan standards, my caption info is fairly pathetic, and truth be told, even I don’t know where some of them were taken. So, like, please don’t give me any grief about this. When I was working, I had so much record-keeping, captioning and keywording to do, that when it came to my photography for fun (which almost all of this was), I basically went on strike in the clerical department. Sorry.
As a nod to my brief time as a railroader in Georgia, I am using the moniker KudzuTraveler. I hope you enjoy the photos, here. Click on a pic to see a big one.
I will slowly be adding more, seven at a time (per website rules). At some point when I’ve added 7,14, 21, etc. more, I’ll let you know.
I guess I’ll be changing my “cover photo” on the railroad gallery, because I see now that on a phone it’s cropped to a square. [:(] That 1218 shot doesn’t work as a square. But you can still see the whole photo in the gallery.
BTW, I will be adding more caption info to some pix.
Many years ago, I showed my portfolio to the legendary Director of Photography at National Geographic, Robert Gilka. He really liked that shot with the Conrail freight, sunset and cropduster; and he said to me, “In a year or two, bring me back a tray of 50 slides where each shot is as good as this one.” That’s when I realized I probably wasn’t ever going to shoot for Nat Geo. (But I did get a few assigments for their children’s magazine.)
York, that’s an FL9, on the Metro North’s Hudson River line. That engine can be diesel, or, in the metro NYC area, switch over to a third-rail electric. Really, that’s the most banked track I’ve ever seen, and at a station, no less.
Some of these curves persisted into the '70s; I don’t remember the precise fraction but more than 10 degrees peak superelevation. Stopped at a couple of stations (I wish I could remember which ones!) it was physically uncomfortable to sit in the coach seats!
Wow, incredible pictures! What kind of camera did you used? The quality is really good. The black and white picture is my favorite. It looks so mysterious and amazing!
Over the course of my career, I mostly used Nikon cameras. Many of the pix were originally slides (which I’ve recently scanned) and most were shot with a Nikon F3. Most of the originally-digital shots were done with a Nikon D2X or D3X. Having said that, I should add that unless you are shooting for printed media reproduction in a large size, or wish to make very big prints, you really don’t need super high resolution. Those images, being for the web, are pretty low res, the biggest only 1500 pixels wide. The master .psd images are much higher res (as much as 16x bigger), and these shots were generated from masters. So many, many cameras will do a good job. The three shots at the Strasburg RR were shot with my iPhone. I wouldn’t get too hung up on camera brand or type. However, fast telephoto lenses, although quite expensive, are a godsend. Many of my RR shots were done with a 200mm f2.8 or 300mm F2.8. IIRC, the shot with the crop duster was shot with a 500mm mirror lens.
I do quite a bit of Photoshop work on almost all of my photos. That’s a significant factor in what you’re seeing. The shot with the plane was done on Kodachrome 64, which was the universal workhorse back then. The digital version looks pretty much the same. Other images have gotten more “help.”
Thanks Lithonia, your photographs are excellent. I thank you for posting them. I believe you have put some great effort & thought in what you have shot and how you composed it. Where and when did you get the N&W’s steam shots? Looking forward to the additional postings.
Yes, Paul, I love the way the one kid is covering his ears.
Electroliner, my notes say September 30, 1990. I know it was in Virginia. I might be able to get more info by looking at more slides of that chase. Somewhere I’ll probably find a road sign or some other kind of clue. Stay tuned. What I loved was that the engine really ran fast. That’s the only articulated I’ve ever seen run, and she put on quite a show. It was awe-inspiring. My wife was very impressed!
Back before N&W dieselized, while I was working on the PRR, I saw A’s pull manifest freight trains into Clare Yard (Cincinnati) and drop their train, turn and depart back to Portsmouth in about three hours. I had heard, but never saw it, that they were used occasionally on passenger trains. On a fan trip from Cinciinati to Portsmouth, saw one in the “Lubritorium” that the N&W used to service them. It was like a Jiffy Lube for locomotives. A brick and glass block building with a pit and all the lube hoses hanging from the ceiling. The J’s would run from Roanoke to Cincinnati, then run through all the way to Norfolk VA. Then take a train back to Roanoke. Great utilization.
I wish I had taken notes of the numbers on the J’s I saw in Bristol. It is possible that over the four years or so that when I occasionally went into town after the evening meal I did see all of them. I did see one K–coming in with the local from Roanoke; it, too, had the streamlined casing. I never had the opportunity to see an A.