Steam & Excursion > Japanese Steam

1. This is a well known spot near Kutchan, Kokkaido and the mountain behind is
Mt. Youtei (too bad I did not get there when there is snow on the mountain).
The engine is C62 3(a Hudson) on the point of "Niseko" in July 1900.
C62 3 is now retired

2. This is C57 180 (a Pacific) on the point of a special train. It was rice trans-planting
time and the fields were filled with water. It was raining on 18 May 2002. I was wet.

3. A few hours later I shot the same C57 180, again in rain. This engine runs from
time time.

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Haruo, I know that you cannot possibly be old enough to have filmed the Hudson in 1900. The other shots, more recent, are there steam railfans in Japan who are as crazy as we are in USA about steam when it runs?

Hi nycman,

Sorry my senior moment -- the correct date was July 1990. July
was not good for good steam picture in Japan, no white steam.

Hi nycman

I forgot to answer the second part of your question. My impression is we steamfans
have the same heart all over the world (= Japanese fans are equally crazy), but others
may have different opinions. I was not alone in the three pictures here. The fireman
put on black smoke for us in 1, and I did get to spots 2 and 3 because I met Japanese
railfans on the train (they have metallic camera boxes) who showed me the way in RAIN!

4. This is again C57 180 on the following day (19 May 2002). Rain was gone.
And I went to this famous bridge at Kitagata by an earier train, walked here
and waited. There were quite a few Japanese railfans.

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Very interesting photos.

I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of using Photoshop to clean up the scan a bit. Something I enjoy doing. Anyway, as you can see, Photoshop and Photoshop Elements can do a lot to restore a "damaged" slide, or photo. It doesn't take much, just a little practice.

Steve Carter
Gig Harbor, WA
My Photography

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Hi Steve

Thank you. It looks much better. Could you tell me what you did? I have
Photoshop but I am yet to learn how to use it. Haruo

Haruo:

I used the Spot Healing brush, set with a size of about 30. Just click on a spot with some dirt or artifacts. Sometimes a second click is required. Work your way around the open areas. I then increased the brush size to about 100 and went over the sky a second time, sort of blending it together.

When you get to areas near the trees, and other area with texture, switch to the Clone Stamp Tool. Start with a brush size of about 15. Alt click on a nice clear portion of the sky and then click on a bad spot. When you get into the grass, ballast and other areas, make the brush smaller, between 5 and 10. Find a spot that looks similar to the bad spot, alt click there, and then click the bad spot. You will have to experiment and get a feel for this, it does take some practice. Of course if the steam plume was more pronounced this would have been much more difficult. I only spent about 10 minutes on it.

Steve

Steve Carter
Gig Harbor, WA
My Photography

Thank you, Steve. Great job you did! haruo