March 2019 - The Trackside Photographer

Posted on March 28, 2019September 19, 2019 by admin

I Liked It!

I have been involved with railroads, one way or another, my entire life. My very earliest memories at three years old are of being on board the Southern Pacific/Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific’s Golden State with my Mom. As a pre-teen, I would regularly ride my bike to the depot in Goleta, California, to take in what the Southern Pacific’s Coast Line had to offer an observer. Once a teen, and into my college years, I decided mere observation wasn’t quite enough, and I started hopping freight trains. It was at about this time that I picked up a camera and began recording these adventures.

In 1976 I snagged a job with the American Freedom Train and traveled the country for a year as the AFT’s Assistant Curator. Now my interest in railroads made a transition—I was getting paid!

I liked it.

Posted on March 21, 2019March 28, 2019 by admin

Around the World in 16 Days

The Trans-Siberian Express

This trip, strangely enough, did not start with something I got in the mail. I was at a meeting of a group to which I belong, and met someone who also was quite well traveled. We started chatting about things we had done and places we had been, and happened to mention the Trans-Siberian Express. This is a fascinating train trip that starts in Moscow and ends in Vladivostok on the east coast of Asia.

Posted on March 14, 2019March 21, 2019 by admin

Two Trains,
Two Photographers

West Leesport, Pennsylvania

In December 1990, the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern Railroad (RBMN) bought 150 miles of tracks in east-central Pennsylvania from Conrail in the process of expanding from a 13-mile shortline (the Blue Mountain & Reading, on the remaining portion of the former Pennsylvania Railroad’s Schuylkill Valley branch) to a 300-mile regional. The “Anthracite Cluster” included mostly ex-Reading Company routes—both main lines and branches—as well as bits and pieces of ex-Lehigh Valley and ex-Central of New Jersey trackage.

To celebrate the expansion, and the railroad’s heritage, the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern operated a weekend of freight and passenger trains in early June of 1991, using Reading Technical & Historical Society diesels and their own ex-Reading T-1 #2102—herself built in 1945 in the Reading Company’s shops in downtown Reading, Pennsylvania. For a few unseasonably hot days, the tracks between Reading and Cressona once again felt the weight of a giant 4-8-4 pulling coal cars, almost like the old days. (Unlike the old days, the engine wore Blue Mountain & Reading lettering on her tender, and all of the coal cars had Conrail markings, but I don’t think too many of the assembled fans minded much.)

Posted on March 12, 2019March 14, 2019 by admin

Editor’s Notebook

*Norfolk Southern trestle near Rileyville, Virginia – Photo by Edd Fuller*

Last month, we looked at some of the reasons you might want to consider printing your work. (See here.) Living with your prints, and seeing them every day will sharpen your judgement and improve your work. A printed photograph is likely to be a more permanent means to preserve your memories. (For an interesting take on this, see “The Lesson from Costco’s Photo Lab”) And printing can be a valuable way to curate a meaningful body of work.

If you decide to print, you will find that the process is not easy, and it is not cheap. There are two options: buy a printer and print at home, or send your work out to a photo lab.

Posted on March 7, 2019March 14, 2019 by admin

Riding the Joliet Rocket

No, this isn’t from WWII in the forties, but present day history buffs volunteering their time in their magnificent period uniforms aboard the “Frank Thomson” PRR closed-end observation car, seated in its comfortable art deco lounge area and photographed on September 16, 2018. The train is the “Joliet Rocket” clipping along at over sixty miles per hour on its way to Chicago’s LaSalle Street Station powered by the famous Iron War Horse #765 of the Nickel Plate Road. Built in 1944, NKP 765 is now owned and operated by the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society. The four fan trips held over the weekend of September 15th and 16th, 2018 are named in remembrance of the fallen-flag Rock Island Rocket trains of the past that ran on these rails.