Posted on by admin

Rites of Passage

A seven-year-old, junkyard-bound Plymouth Valiant was revived to serve as the author’s temporary transportation to spend a weekend photographing trains, seen here as Vermont Railway SW-1500 No. 501 passes through Shaftsbury Depot.

It was getting on toward the end of August, 1971 and I was getting ready to head off to college in Boston in another couple of weeks. One of the rites of passage for a young man leaving his home town, I believed, was to take an epic road trip before putting his homestead in the rear-view mirror. In my case, it would be a trip to photograph railroad activities in Vermont’s largest city, Burlington, a little more than two hours distant from my location in the southern part of the Green Mountain state. The only problem at that point was that my car was up on blocks, awaiting a new transmission. My salvation was temporarily found in the form of a well-worn and rough-running ’63 Plymouth Valiant that I bought for $75.

Read more
Posted on by admin

Summers at the Station

Four friends who adopted me in the summers.

From 1966 until 1972, my parents rented a camp along Lake Pennesseewassee, in Norway, Maine. For my father, it was a break from his responsibilities on the Long Island Rail Road, and a chance to spend hours bass fishing, alone with his thoughts. When I wasn’t fishing or swimming, I’d head to Grand Trunk station in the adjacent community of South Paris. It took a bit of courage, but armed with a file of 8” X 10” glossy prints, I walked into the station and introduced myself to the block operator, a genial Quebecker named Guy Pomerleau. Guy smiled as he thumbed through the prints and told me to wait until the local switcher returned, as there was a conductor I should meet.

Read more