Leica LTM Some efforts of an LTM newbie...

[Luddite Frank]

Attached are some photos from a recent rail-fan outing.


Photos were shot with a Leica III (1934, chrome) on Fujicolor 400, variety of lenses.



This is my first attempt at posting photos... we'll see if I live-up to my forum-name...


Luddite Frank


Lefthand photo was shot with 50mm Summicron, center with Elmar 90 (coated), rh photo with Elmar 35 (uncoated).

The two locomotive photos are from Steamtown Nat'l Historic Site's "Ice Train" run to Tobyhanna, in Jan 19, 2008. The tunnel is an 1880's stone-arch structure, where the Lehigh Valley RR 's "Mountain Cut-off" crossed the existing Everhart branch of the Central RR of NJ, near DuPont, PA.

 

[Paulbe]

CN in PA? Hmmmm!! How close are you to Altoona and the Horseshoe??
Totally beautiful loco, though...

 

[Luddite Frank]

Canadian Steam in PA, yes....

This is 3254, a Mikado, which does most of the road-work. They also have a beautiful Pacific, #2317, an ex-Canadian Pacific. They have a Baldwin 0-6-0 switcher on roster, but I believe it is being shopped for its 5-year overhaul.



It seems that American RR's were falling all over themselves to scrap their steam power in the early 1950's, with a few exceptions like the Norfolk and Western, which ran steam up until 1959 or '60...

The Canadians kept using steam into the mid-1960's, after US rail historians realized that most of the American steam was gone.

By the time guys like Nelson Blount were trying to find viable steamers to pull excursion trains, the Canadian iron was found to be most serviceable.

Steamtown has been taking a lot of heat for not having American steam pulling its excursions; they have a Boston & Maine steamer under resto, but it will be years before that one is ready to go... the NPS, which runs Steamtown, has it's bureaucratic baggage that slows things down...

At any rate, I'm lucky to live only 2 miles from Steamtown, and the Moscow excursion comes within a mile of my house, so I get more opportunities than most to shoot live steam !

Oh, Steamtown & I are in Scranton, which is the northeast corner of the state; Horsehoe Curve & Altoona are down to the SW corner.


LF

 

[brachal]

Nice shots, Frank!

 

[cary]

Very nice photographs, just picked up a 135mm Hektor for $26 for my IIIF.

 

[Paulbe]

Frank--thanks! I remember that N+W were building "Js" as late as 1957. If you remember, the 1218 Class "A" was rebuilt close to me--Birmingham AL--and run for several years on many excursions. In the good ol' days, you could wander around the shops in B'ham with a camera and get the scoop on the rebuilds--not so anymore! You are so lucky to live near the steamers--now if UP could get a Big Boy running--wow!
Thanks again...

 

[Luddite Frank]

Steamtown has a Big-Boy on static display... the name says it all !

A couple of rangers quipped that "they had to grease a few tunnels to get it East"...

UP still has an operational Challenger (4-6-6-4), don't they ?

The Erie used to have 4-6-6-4 Challengers based in nearby Carbondale, for pusher help up to Jefferson, NY... sadly, the Erie scrapped all their steam by 1955.

When anthracite coal was still the major fuel of industrial America, we had at least six major rail-roads operating in NE Penna, in no particular order:

The Delaware & Hudson; Erie; Lehigh Valley; Pennsylvania RR; Delaware, Lackawanna & Western; NY,Ontario & Western; Lehigh & Susquehanna, later absorbed by the Central RR of New Jersey; and the NY, Susquehanna & Western with their "Wilkes-Barre & Eastern" division from Stroudsburg to Wilkes-Barre.

All these railroads criss-crossed the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys; when coal began it's decline after WW I, the rail-roads began to feel the pinch; there were several mergers in the 1960s: Erie and DL & W ; Pennsy & NYCentral, while other just faded away, like the NY, O & W... then came CONRail, which delivered the coup de grace to the local rail networks - CONRail took the best parts of the predecessor RR's ROW, and streamlined the operating trackage through the area... the remainder was abandoned, and has slowly succumbed to redevelopment since 1977...

So, we have some guys who call themselves the "Dead Railroad Society: who needs trains when you've got dirt? "; we wait all year long for the leaves to drop, and light dustings of snow to make the terrain of long-abandoned right-of-way stand-out amongst the trees , shopping centers, subdivisions....

One of my railfan goals are the narrow-gauge RR's in New Mexico...


LF

 

[Paul C. Perkins MD]

UP still has an operational Challenger (4-6-6-4), don't they ?


True.
There's a Big Boy stored serviceable in Cheyenne, one in a city park in Cheyenne, and one at the Forney Transportation Museum in Denver (assuming that place is still operating).

Paul