Steam & Excursion > My Other Favorite Ten-Wheeler

After the last Espee steam in 1958, there was still the Western Pacific #94.  For a couple more years, she carried railfans into and out of the Bay Area.  This trip was to Carbona Junction (Tracy) out of Jack London Square.  You can see the vignettes caused by my Argus C-3, I still haven't found a good tool to reduce the vignetting.  And, as always, the exposure was 1/250th at f8 (Kodachrome).

Ed



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/16 06:56 by Auburn_Ed.

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Great photo. Love the lines. Where is she now?

Posted from iPhone

Rio Vista Junction, CA, a museum.  Apparently just slowly aging as a static display.

Ed

The 94 is fully intact and kept indoors at the Western Railway Museum. It ran periodically there into the 1980s, but would require a lot of work to return to service.

Auburn_Ed Wrote:

> After the last Espee steam in 1958, there was
> still the Western Pacific #94.  For a couple more
> years, she carried railfans into and out of the
> Bay Area.  This trip was to Carbona Junction
> (Tracy) out of Jack London Square.  

This was WP 94's last public excursion on June 7, 1959.  WP had taken out the water columns some time in the previous year, and wasn't making the 94 available for railfan excursions in general.  They would make the engine available for historical events, however, and so this trip was arranged to coincide with "Niles Railroad Days," which celebrated 90 years of railroading through Niles with a parade and other activities.  The 90 years included the railroads that became part of SP; the WP had only been serving Niles for about 50 years by that point.  The flyer is below, courtesy the Western Railway Museum Archives.

The 94 had a few more outings after this, but none the public could buy tickets to ride except for the day it piloted the westbound California Zephyr from Fremont to Oakland on August 22, 1960.

> You can see
> the vignettes caused by my Argus C-3, I still
> haven't found a good tool to reduce the
> vignetting. 

About the only thing I've found is somewhat complicated and tricky: careful lightening with the "dodge" tool in Photoshop, sometimes combined with the "sponge" tool to desaturate the lightened areas, followed up with the "area healing brush" to copy the sky texture from a less vignetted part of the sky and even out the irregularites left by the dodging.  It's not the perfect crime by any means, but it can make the sky look a bit more natural.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/16 23:05 by Evan_Werkema.

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With Ed's permission, I am posting the results of the de-vignettifiying technique I described above.  As I said, not the perfect crime, but believable.  Someone who actually knows what they are doing could probably do it better than I did...

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Anyone have any photos of that August 22, 1960 trip ?

train1275 Wrote:

> Anyone have any photos of that August 22, 1960 trip ?

Here's a Robert Hanft shot of the train west of Hayward.  The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the first westbound WP passenger train to run through all the way from Salt Lake City to Oakland.  It was also 94's last run under Western Pacific ownership.

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Beautiful !!!!

Thanks