We don’t talk much about cameras and gear here on The Trackside Photographer. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that the internet is awash with reviews and opinions on any type of photographic equipment one can imagine. And the needs of railroad photographers are not highly specialized: we have published work made with everything from large format view cameras to smart phones.
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After returning non-stop to Bangor by air from the Center for Railroad Photography & Art’s highly successful annual conference, Conversations 2019, at Lake Forest College, I made an unanticipated decision to revisit Northern Maine Junction, located two miles west of the the airport. To me it was a sacred place.
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Just before I step out into the unlit hotel hallway, I grab a few packs of Marlboros and stuff them into my bag. My room door is stuck and needs a good, forceful yank to close the latch. I fear every guest has been awoken by the racket, so with soft steps, I walk down the stairs and continue past the police officer sleeping on the lobby sofa, helmet on the short table next to her. As I open the lobby door I am greeted by frigid February air saturated with the sweet, but the harsh smell of burning coal, a smell I had grown to love.
Illuminated by the glow of the trunk light of his Volkswagen, our guide Jun waits for me and my friend and fellow photographer, Todd. Jun will be taking us from our Sandaoling hotel to the last dragons just a few miles away.
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Driving south through Mississippi on Interstate 55. It’s a cool, rainy morning, the kind of spring day you sometimes get in the South before the summer heat and humidity settles in. I pass the signs for Crystal Springs, Hazelhurst, Wesson, Brookhaven, Bogue Chitto, Summit—towns that lie to the east along the tracks. The tracks, and the Interstate, lead me to McComb. In town, I stop for a morning cup of coffee, and make my way to the former Illinois Central depot.
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In the second half of the 1960s, I made a number of trips up the New York Central’s Harlem Division to Chatham, New York. Chatham was at the northern end (western end by timetable) of the Harlem Division, where the Harlem met the main line of the Boston & Albany Railroad. It was well over a hundred miles north of home, so these trips were adventures for a kid in his early teens.
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