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The New River Gorge

Part Five
A wet autumn day in Thurmond.

Any time I visit the New River Gorge I almost always spend some time in Thurmond. For rail fans visiting southern West Virginia, Thurmond is certainly a must see place. Almost all of the railroad structures which crowded this narrow strip of flat land are gone. Still, there is much about this place which carries you back a hundred years to the boom times of the New River coal fields. A great deal has been written about Thurmond, much of it available on-line, and I’ll not do a history summary here. But I will touch on some of the highlights. Read more

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Ten Grain Elevator Towns

Manitoba, Canada

I have wanted to write a “top 10” grain elevator post for this site for a while. I wasn’t sure exactly what the criteria would be to choose the “top 10.” Obviously it would be subjective. I started going through the list of almost 200 grain elevators that still exist in Manitoba, eliminating the modern concrete elevators right away. I started compiling a “favorites” list but it had significantly more than 10 elevators in it!

Then I thought… Trackside Photographer . . . trackside . . . maybe I should choose the top 10 grain elevators that are still trackside! Brilliant!  However, that eliminated a lot of my favorite elevators from contention. That wouldn’t do.

In the end, I chose a mix of actual trackside elevators plus a few that have not had railway tracks beside them for decades. It’s all subjective. I hope you like them. Read more

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Railroad Findings in Colorado

As the days grew closer, the more excited I became for my Colorado photo-cation.  June 15, 2017 couldn’t come soon enough. After 9 months of waiting and trip planning, the day finally arrived!

There was a group of six of us, plus one lucky friend who lives in Colorado, ready to seek out creative photographic opportunities. I, for one, was looking for anything railroad related, plus inspirational and beautiful snow capped mountain vistas. When your mind is set to look for the subject matter at hand, it seems as though the subject matter ends up finding you. Other times, it’s all in the planning. Read more

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Beyond the Train

As railroad photographers, we tend to feature the train as the main subject. Whether it’s a wider scenic type shot, showing the train snaking through a beautiful landscape, or a tighter telesmash accentuating the undulating terrain being traversed, it’s still a photo featuring equipment rolling along the rails. Sometimes it’s nice to mix things up and look at things from a different angle. I’d like to share a recent example from that different perspective—maybe it’ll spark something in your creative mind. Read more

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Editor’s Notebook

Painters and Photographers
Strasburg, Virginia – April 2015 – Copyright 2017 by Edd Fuller

My favorite photography magazine these days is PleinAir Magazine. Yes, I know that PleinAir is not about photography, but it has been a source of inspiration to me that I cannot find in the pages of the regular photography magazines with their emphasis on gear and technique.

Read more

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Railroad Town:
 Boyce, Virginia

Norfolk & Western Depot circa 1913 – Boyce, Virginia (Norfolk Southern photo on loan to Virginia Polytechnic Institute Library)

The Town of Boyce, Virginia and its railway depot have enjoyed a long history together. Nearly as old as the town, the 1913 structure served as its public gathering place, the portal through which travel and commerce passed, and became Boyce’s icon.

Indeed, it was the crossing of a newly-built Shenandoah Valley Railroad with the Winchester and Berry’s Ferry Turnpike that prompted the birth of a new community in formerly dense, forested land. Unlike Berryville, White Post, and Millwood, the Boyce community—briefly named Boyceville—sprung forth around a stop along the tracks relatively late in Clarke County’s development. The town would not have existed were it not for the arrival of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad in 1879. Read more