Canadian Railroads > MLW Monday, The First Roll of Slides

In late September, 1993, with the impending takeover of CN's Hopewell and Sydney Subs just days away, I took a drive to Cape Breton with the intention of making some "historical" photographs.  Never mind the fact that I knew nothing of the operations up there, and had never shot a frame of Kodachrome in my life, I figured this was as good a time to start as any.  Of course a better time to start would have been the 1980s, when the Fairview Roundhouse in Halifax was overflowing with MLWs, and visitors were actually tolerated if not openly welcomed.  A bit of practice with slide film would have helped too.  It took me a couple years before I could get consistent results in that department.

Anyway, lacking a time machine, and ignorance being bliss, I got to Stellarton late in the day on September 26, and exposed the first frame of the roll of Kodachrome I'd loaded in the borrowed Minolta.  M-420Ws 3568 and 3516 were sitting inside the wye, their work done for the day, but in very grubby light.  Still, almost 30 years later, it is what it is.  Little did I know that the real MLW show would soon start on the CBNS, with C-630Ms and RS-18s powering the road trains and locals.

GTD

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Well, they say something is better than nothing, which is so true in railfan photography. Plus, nowadays there's so much that can be done to correct things. This one ain't bad, esp. given the nature of the subject.

True story: When a buddy of mine and I got into slide shooting in the mid-80s, we'd invariably have a watch session where we'd end up throwing out more shots than we took due to crappy results. At the time we'd laugh about tossing out a pile of slides afterwards, but I kinda regret that now. Ahhh, live and learn...

JG

Just scan these slides and others like them.  Then use a little Photoshop elements magic and the photo wil look better than you think it would.  In the last year and a half I have scanned slides from years back that I thought were questionable but after using Photoshop elements the digital photos are very fine and in a number of cases the digital photos look great.