Anybody Here Photograph ("Shoot") Trains?

CMoore

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For a long time, i had more photo books of trains than anything else.
Just through ... in the usa ... the caboose era. Mid 1980s i guess.

I suppose it makes for a boring shot these days.
All the gorgeous, named, passenger trains are gone. There are only 5 or 6 railroads anymore. The locomotives all look the same, they only get painted one time, then never again.
A lot of the freight is double stack inter-model, so LOTS of squarish hauls

Perhaps much of the "Romance" and aesthetic is gone.?
Steam power made for a lot of great photos
 

runswithsizzers

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As a country, I think it is not so much that Americans love our trains less, but we love our cars more. If the Eisenhower administration had spent the money on rails rather than the interstate highway system, we would be living in a different country today.

Where I live (SW Missouri), the last passenger train left the station in the 1960s. I got my first camera in 1970, and I did manage to get a few photos of our old train station before it was torn down in 1977.

Frisco was once a major employer here - we had a big rail yard and repair barns. The tracks are now owned by BNSF, but I think operations are scaled back considerably from the Frisco days. I sometimes photograph the freight trains.

And there are still a few steam trains running for the tourists. The Cumbres & Toltec in New Mexico / Colorado, and the Durango & Silverton in Colorado are both fun.


Early 1970s, Plus-X


2019, Astia
 

MattKing

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Thread title tweaked - don't want to encourage train robbers you know .
 
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CMoore

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Real nice you got a shot of that.
In their day, even in a small town, the train station was a HUGE Part of society, well beyond simple transportation.
 

Sirius Glass

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CMoore

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I have the O Winston book, where he shot the last days of steam, at night.
I think it was all Norfolk Western stuff.
Awesome book, especially when you learn what it took back then to light the scenes.
 

DWThomas

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You will find some RR topics in my gallery here at Photrio, even more stuff out on PBase. And those activities go back to around 1960 when there was more passenger service here in Pennsylvania, as in some rather thin archives here and here. Most of those were excursions; even today it's remarkable how many "tourist lines" are operating. And some of those actually do a bit of freight service to industrial sites along their right-of-way.

I remain envious of our friends across the pond who seem to have astonishing amounts of passenger rail service available, even today. Here in SE Pennsyltucky, there were seven round trips a day between Philadelphia and Bethlehem in the late 1950s and early 60s. Today the northern half of that route is a multi-use trail! As is the former Central RR of New Jersey run from Allentown through Bethlehem to Easton from which it once ran passenger service to NYC.

I have more railroad related stuff from the period between those early sixties and this millennium but haven't quite gotten to organizing them and uploading. Perhaps some day I'll get a round tu-it.
 

DWThomas

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Sirius' comments about Roanoke and O. Winston Link reminded me. Yers Trooly and his Faire Spouse met friends from western Pa in Roanoke for our 2017 "Turkey Day" get-together. We stayed in the hotel overlooking the Norfolk & Western tracks, an approximately 300 room lodging originally built by the railroad. The former freight depot is now the Virginia Museum of Transportation and the former passenger station is now the Roanoke History Museum which has a major section dedicated to O. Winston Link, and also a section about Raymond Loewy, the industrial designer who came up with the streamlined styling for a number of locomotives -- N&W J class, Pennsylvania RR GG-1 electric, etc. Both, plus a number of other museums and restaurants were walking distance from the hotel, it was quite a fun time.
 
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CMoore

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Wonderful.
Thank You Both

Not sure we ever had a "Grand Rail Station" in USA CA.
The San Jose Depot still stands, but it is just average in size and beauty.
The San Francisco Depot was torn down and moved, but it was no great sight either.
Los Angeles is........ still in use, but we just never had anything like Buffalo, Philadelphia, Kansas, Grand Central NYC, etc etc etc

Pennsylvania Station NYC................ it is damn near a war crime what we did to that. 50 lousy years is all.
What a marvelous place that was.
What a crying shame to lose that once in a life-time..... Cathedral really
 

Carnie Bob

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My father in law was Al Patterson, he photographed trains for years, he got a job with Bell Telephone so he could work on the poles coming and going out of Toronto's train station, he would take his camera up the pole with him when working on communications and photograph the trains coming and going.
 

mtnbkr

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DWThomas

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mtnbkr said:
Small world. I lived in Roanoke my last two years of High School and my wife is from there. I go back there several times a year.
Click to expand...

I was quite impressed with the city. Knowing the N&W had merged with the Southern and the headquarters/office stuff moved out, I thought the place might be a bit run down. But there were a lot of upgrades, repurposed buildings, museums, and cultural activities in evidence. The former eight story Art Deco brick N&W office headquarters is now an upscale condominium near that massive hotel. And some of the railroad facilities continue to operate for repair and service.

On Thanksgiving Day there was a "Drumstick Dash" 5K walk/run to raise funding to help the homeless and such that had several thousand participants. And I noted right off the historic market square, a few yards from a late 1800s vintage horse watering trough was an EV charging station!

Don't know if Covid affected anything, but apparently Amtrak passenger service had returned -- but to a new, less grandiose station.
 
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CMoore

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Wow..... there is a dedicated train guy.
Do you have any of his film.?
 

mtnbkr

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They've really leaned into becoming a cultural and recreational destination similar to Asheville, NC. I'm rather fond of the town, and not because my wife is from there. Given the opportunity, I'd move back in a heartbeat even though my family has since moved on. I only lived there 2yrs full time, and 5 years part time after that, but consider it my hometown now.

Amtrak has definitely returned and remained. My in-laws were talking about taking it from Roanoke to see us here in Manassas (we have an Amtrak stop as well).

Chris
 

mtnbkr

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To get back on the subject...
I'm not a trainspotter, but living in a rail town, I find myself taking pictures of trains and train-related scenery.

First is a random freight train passing by while I had a rangefinder loaded with Lomo Metropolis and a new lens to test.


Next is a shot of the train station in my town shot in Berger Pancro if I recall correctly.


This is a shot of the tracks near a wildlife preserve I like to hike. This one I scanned myself from a negative developed at home, but I am struggling with the lack of a proper camera scanning rig, hence the lack of sharpness in the corners.


Finally, another shot of the tracks not far from where I live using Lomo Metropolis 120 in a Brownie Hawkeye.


Chris
 

Ivo Stunga

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I do shoot them, yes. Especially when abandoned
 

mtnbkr

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Durango & Silverton steam train en route to Silverton. This is an awesome ride even if you're not "into" trains.
 
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CMoore

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mtnbkr said:
Durango & Silverton steam train en route to Silverton. This is an awesome ride even if you're not "into" trains.
View attachment 363461
Click to expand...

That narrow gauge is a fascinating story.
Was it the Rio Grande that went through The Royal Gorge.?
That must have been a sight to see.
Same with The Milwaukee Road and Great Northern where they went through the North-West

It is amazing how quickly passenger train service, in the usa, came to a halt.
I have no desire to travel from San Francisco to NYC by wagon train, but i would love to have done it by rail, circa 1940
 

Mr Bill

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CMoore said:
Perhaps much of the "Romance" and aesthetic is gone.?
Steam power made for a lot of great photos
Click to expand...

Hi, I think perhaps much of the "romance" is a result of nostalgia, and a tendency to hang on to the good parts of old memories.

I see that myself with things I've experienced in my lifetime. For example when someone has to take their modern car in for an expensive repair. They sometimes yearn for "those days when you could fix your own car," maybe into the 1960s. So I remind them, in those days if you didn't get a tuneup before winter you were likely gonna have a "no-start" problem when it got "really cold." I'm in the Midwest USA where this means near zero F (-18 C). Then they'd be out there with hood up, jumper cables from another car, air cleaner off, using starter spray into the carb and maybe a screwdriver handle sticking up out of thecarb, holding the choke open. And about as often as not the car would end up just sitting there until the weather warmed up a bit, maybe almost up to "freezing." After such a reminder the nostalgia always goes away. (I kinda regret not taking any photos of this sort of thing.)

My mother was from rural North Dakota where it got much colder. Her father, primarily a farmer, worked for the railroad in the off-season to help eke out a living. Ten kids raised in a, you might say "rustic," wood framed house with a wood-burning stove in one room for heat and cooking. I'm sure my mother missed the romantic days of outhouse trips, especially in the snow at 20 below zero F. I kinda suspect my grandfather didn't really appreciate the glory of working on those dirty greasy mechanisms and the residue of burned coal in the air.

Anyway, back to modern times... I don't have much interest in photographing modern trains, but I do generally love mechanical things, especially those old muscle cars and steam engines. Back about a dozen (?) years ago Union Pacific put a couple of their old steam locos back into operating condition and set them off on good-will excursions in the US. So when they got into my neck of the woods I made it a point to get at least a few good shots (not with real bullets, though). They overnighted in a local rail yard, and UP was very accommodating to the rail fans.

This was my most popular shot among steam engine fans in the office...
(And yeah, I'm guilty of helping to glamorize the thing)...

 
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CMoore

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Mr Bill said:
Hi, I think perhaps much of the "romance" is a result of nostalgia, and a tendency to hang on to the good parts of old memories.
Click to expand...
Truer words my friend. Well said.

I am 65. Of all my friends, i think i am the only one that pines for a cassette deck in the car, still have my records and turntable, and i still shoot film, even though they are the better photographers.
They got ME into photog, yet they all all moved onto to digital 15 years ago.

Yeah, less expense, but tune-ups and oil changes every 327 miles.
I remember, circa 1975 my Father and Uncle saying that "Radial Tires" were no bid deal. Bias ply had done fine and still do.

Mr Bill said:
Click to expand...
Wow, they really had that baby shiny and bright..!!!
Nice frame.
It is a very impressive looking machine.
Is it moving.?
Judging by the Steam/Smoke.....i would say no.?
 

Mr Bill

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CMoore said:
I am 65
Click to expand...

Wish I could be 65 again, though I'm not too awfully far past it.


CMoore said:
Wow, they really had that baby shiny and bright..!!!
Nice frame.
It is a very impressive looking machine.
Is it moving.?
Click to expand...

Hi, not moving, just sitting in the rail yard. Waiting until morning for excursions.

And not shiny like that in real life. I dressed it up quite a bit with hand held flash. As I recall it's something like 15 second exposure; during that time I ran alongside the engine and manually popped off something like 8 or 10 low-power flashes appropriately directed to get these reflections. Trial and error with a digital camera; check the result then modify the flash-pointing on the next run. As I recall the full engine is something like 110 feet long; I was starting to get a bit worn out. Trying not to trip on the weeds in near darkness.

Glad I did it though. As I recall they later found a significant defect and took it back out of service; might never be resurrected again? I'm not sure.

Ps, fwiw as I recall this is very close to a straight out-of-camera jpeg. Probably only a slight tweak in contrast using "curves" tool. Might have had a tweak in "sharpening" before I scaled it down for online use. This is my SOP; I rarely shoot raw unless I don't have enough setup time.
 
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mtnbkr

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We took Amtrak from here (NoVA) to NYC back in 2017. It was about the same price as flying, but we could walk to the station here in town and walk from the station in NYC to our hotel, so we didn't have to faff about with transpo to/from airports, baggage checks, etc. It was a very relaxing way to get there. It took 5hrs by train, but if you factor in the travel time to/from the airports and getting through security, it was about the same.

Chris
 
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