Nostalgia & History > Trolling...Looking for something to shoot when no trains around

Go out on line enough over the years, and for all of the cool shots you get of trains in action, you also have to remember all of those countless hours when nothing much was happening. After you kill a few flies, knock over some ant hills, stop at a junk food store, or just sometimes nod off, you start looking for anything to shoot. If it is on the rails or maybe even just the rails themselves, you shoot and ask yourself later in the post trip revue, why you wasted film on "that shot!" Yep I had a thousand of those why moments, but, not with the benefit of looking into the future at those times I shot. Fast forward to about a quarter of a way into the 21st Century, and many things disappearing forty to sixty years into the rearview mirror, I feel like I might have been a clairvoyant genius at the time. A few examples of boredom to brilliant.

top...Sayre Pa. with no movement, just a what the hell shot.

middle...Hoboken terminal EL

bottom..a 1964 grab of the only time I ever saw Canton boxcars. Shot because I was 13, and making my father stop for anything that was sitting on the rails.

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

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top...reqium for some Alcos

middle...Pittsburgh when it was PC

bottom...mainline shut down

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

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top...boxcars and real customer service

middle...Reading Pa when it was Reading RR.

bottom...the end of the Bedford branch next to B&O main in Hyndman Pa.

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

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What a bunch!  I love the old industrial images especially.

Thanks for sharing your photography.

Dave

Good stuff! Once again I'm glad to know I'm not the only railfan who pointed a camera at something other than routine engine, caboose or car shots! I have several dozens of such slides in my collection, which I've tagged as "scene" shots. I've even acquired such slides from other railfans at swap meets & train shows, etc. In my books, if a slide has some historical scenery content it's just as important as a good train shot... :^)

Lance

Added: Your last image is my favorite. A sad, wistful scene telling countless stories of days gone by. Who knows what kind of RR activity people in that house (ex-business?) saw on this track 60-70 years ago...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/24 06:07 by santafe199.

Clairvoyant and brilliant indeed !  Being a Reading fan, I really like the second last shot that shows the steaming ore pellets from the Joanna Mine on their way to the furnaces in Bethlehem,PA. Great stuff as always Bill !

Super historical views especially the EL Hoboken terminal scene!
Bob

Great look back. When Isaw the steaming Taconite in the Reading hoppers my flashback was all the iron ore trains I saw on the Bethlehem Branch and why in the heck was ore steaming this far from Port Richmond and Venezuela? Totally forgot about the Johanna Mine. Doh! I chased the Johanna train north of the mine when it had the latest and greatest green and yellow diesels! It couldn't be done since most of that line has been gone for years and even the parallel highway (Rte 82) was washed out during a hurricane and never repaired. Even the landmark Johanna stack visible from the Pennsylvania turnpike is long gone.
Thanks for some very thought provoking photos.
Gonut

Great composition and fascinating subject matter. The yard shots are jammed with info too, track, signals, rolling stock etc.
Excellent!

Love these. While I did take my fair share of scenes, like many, should have done more. As fans we gravitate to locomotives in particular, drooling over the rivet details while we should have been recording everything around us. The photos I cherished the most haven't been the roster shots, it's been the one's that include other things besides just the train.

Roger Durfee
Akron, OH

A NICE collection of very interesting and enjoyable pictures. The last one is sad.

Larry

These trolling photos simply reinforce and validate my passion and interest in railroad history.  Thar's more to them railroads than shiny rails, bright headlights and a long string of cars..

Anyone recognize pic 6?

Great old scenes, the railroad world sure has changed...

JG

Everything in the Sayre shot with corporate identity has disappeared and the only thing left in that shot is the hill!

I had my fair share of scene shot opportunities. I read half of Michener's HAWAII with my feet in a stream while waiting 8 hours for nothing on the EL at Tuxedo, NY. Another example was 12 \hours on PCs West Shore at West Point until the wreck train came by! I do have a fantastic slide collection of spikes, plates, ties, and piles of just about anything you would find lying about. You have to remember that in the sixties a roll of 36 (sometimes 38) Kodachrome slides only cost $3.50 and developing was about the same, and slide files thank God were generally on sale below $4 apiece. My deceased mentors at that time instructed me to take AREA shots of every place I went and basically I stuck to that rule. Now of course, phone pics except for the storage have replaced the frequency of cheap slides. Thanks for aiming your camera at everything you could see!

So many classic railroad items to be seen in this "no train" set.
Excellent!
Gary

timz Wrote:
> Anyone recognize pic 6?

I'd wager that it's Bill Rettberg's work.
/Ted

Excellent selection of photos that really make you appreciate black & white photography.
The amount of infrastructure in the second photo is incredible.
That last photo with the PRR whistle post is a classic.

BEDFORD BRANCH! HOLY COW! Please please please post any more photos of the branch you have!

My parents had a weekend house in Clearville PA (outside Everett) and I followed the remains of the branch from Bedford to Hyndman PA in 1990 or so. No much left, some bridge abutments and grading was it.

Fritz in MD