Railroad History Archives - Page 8 of 23 - The Trackside Photographer

Posted on February 6, 2020February 13, 2020 by admin

Steel Arteries

THE FORGOTTEN MAIN STREET OF AMERICA

The transcendent universal compassion of trains being the main street of America reconciles me to a place in time when the rails flourished. The angels whispered the secrets of the night train speeding its way to darkness. I could attend to the gentle chugging of the Railroad, comforted that there was someone else awake in the middle of the night. Tick tick…tick tick… tick tick the soothing steel wheels sound off a smooth rhythm as I sit still in bed. The passing trains are like musicians singing me a song. The whistles fade into the distance as I close my eyes for sleep and for dreaming.

Posted on January 30, 2020February 6, 2020 by admin

A Monday Morning Trick
at OW Tower

During the mid-nineteen-sixties, my father’s assignment was changed around. He would open OW tower, located almost in the shadow of the Tappan Zee Bridge on New York Central’s Electric Division, on Monday mornings. OW was closed from Saturday afternoon until he got there.

Posted on January 23, 2020January 30, 2020 by admin

Depot Road

On a cold and rainy afternoon in late December, 2019, I stood on the railroad tracks in the small village of Fishers Hill, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I was surrounded by weeds, and distances were lost in mist. Behind me, the tracks crossed over Tumbling Run, and before me stood a derelict, two-story, gable-roofed frame building. One one side, the tracks; on the other side, Depot Road.

Posted on January 16, 2020January 23, 2020 by admin

Shoot it while you can

As an adult, I often look back at some of the things I have been told throughout my life. We often overlook the things we are told as youngsters, but as we age, we look back at some of these statements and realize what they mean. More often than not, it is too late to take action and we end up having some form of regret. This applies to us in the railfan community just like it does to anything else.

Posted on December 26, 2019January 2, 2020 by admin

A Year of Discovery

A personal photo project is a journey where the main goal is to shoot intentionally during a given period of time for a certain purpose. A way to motivate shooting more pictures, stretching creativity, and supporting an important cause. It is best committing to subject matter which draws passion, in my case vintage railroads.

One Year

These days I absolutely enjoy photography more than ever. A labor of love. It is my obsession and passion.

Inspired by National Geographic photographer Todd Gipstein’s “X100: 1 Mile, 1 Year, 1 Lens” video, I challenged myself with this similar twelve-month personal photo project. Over a period of one year, I used the Fujifilm X100T camera with integral 35mm equivalent fixed lens exclusively at a one mile portion of a former freight railroad on the streets of Brooklyn, New York City. All the compositions include the abandoned but still intact right-of-way; the objective being a documentary of how the surrounding environment matured around the once-bustling rail line.

Posted on December 12, 2019December 9, 2019 by admin

Last Christmas for the
Illinois Central

At one time, there was a gas station and garage in downtown Elkville, Illinois. Not that there was a whole lot in Elkville to make up a downtown; it’s a small village of fewer than 1,000 people, 300 miles south of Chicago on the mainline of the former Illinois Central Railroad in southern Illinois. The downtown gas station gave way to a Casey’s General Store at the edge of town, and a vacant lot took its place. Eventually, a small gazebo was placed where the gas station once stood.

On December 8, 1999, the gazebo was dressed up for Christmas as a southbound freight came blaring through town. On this date the railroad had been under the flag of the Canadian National Railway for five months, but you wouldn’t know it in this photo. As the new millennium began however, the remnants of the Illinois Central would become fewer and fewer.

One could say that 1999 would be the last Christmas for the Illinois Central.