Canadian Railroads > Selkirks in B&W

Hello, Canadians. My Great Grandfather came south to Montana in cowboy days though that line moved from Albany, NY to Dresden, ON for a time. Dutch immigrants to New Amsterdam. So much for that.

I am slowly cooking the AltaMont 2014 Cranbrook images to post soon but I got this one done this evening and thought it was interesting enough to stand alone. I was north of Ft Steele waiting for trains and this coal train came up from the east right out of the sun with little time to move in territory all new to me. I grabbed the coming out of the sun shot account pixels are cheap.

First is the best I think I can pull out the image in color. There is always the chance to throw out the color and massage the grey scale images. I took the sliders and moved both the blue and red sliders towards the darker end to make these colors go towards black. Then I used the sliders to trim the levels on both ends. I am pretty happy with the way this came out especially the way the locomotive breaks out of the Selkirks. There is just enough glint on the locomotive edges for an unexpected bonus. Unfortunately I think some of the cloud highlights are burned out. I think you would have to print with the white value set to about 220 to print a grew tone in those areas. I might go back and black out that rear cab window which sort of looks like another headlight.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/14 20:20 by fbe.

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Darn, I was hoping for 5900 series 2-10-4 Selkirks, nice images nonetheless

Posted from iPhone

Those steamers were way before my time and so far no one has gifted me a collection of negatives featuring such a beast.

Posted from Windows Phone OS 7

At least a couple of steam era railfans "did" the 2-10-4's (Selkirk type) which operated between Calgary and Revelstoke.
There were two classes, the unstreamlined engines from the 1920's and the semi-streamlined engines from the 1940's.

Most of the pictures are from the Field Hill between Lake Louise and Field. The pre-Trans-Canada Highway "Banff-Golden" road followed the CPR tracks very closely down the hill.

Newton Rossiter was a railway carman from Toronto who shot motion pictures. His CNR pass, union card and charm got him cab rides on the Field Hill "pushers" (2-10-0's) and a bunk in the old "Mount Stephen House" hotel in Field.

A "Newt" signature was to walk to the mileboard from locations where he visited the shop track, and quite often, trains departing a terminal would be working hard leaving town. He would also talk to the engine crew and ask the fireman to sand the flues.

Nicolas Morant, the CPR photographer wasn't a railfan but he did shoot many publicity shots around Banff which included the "Selkirks".

Two "Selkirks" are preserved, 5931 at Heritage Park in Calgary and 5935 at Exporail near Montreal. 5931 is famous in Calgary as the school children of the 1950's raised the money ten cents at a time to purchase the locomotive from the CPR.