This is one of the first shots I’ve taken at night since I applied the Canon firmware hack to my camera. The exposure time was 64 seconds at f/3.2. I took the shot at approximately 11:30 p.m.
The TennBridge is one of my favorite spots to shoot. It’s a double-tracked vertical lift railroad bridge, and one of the longest of its type in the US. There is a lot of railroad traffic over the bridge … four separate trains crossed tonight while I was out there, and I was only out for a little over an hour.
If you look closely, just this side of the lift part of the span, you’ll see that one pier isn’t quite like the others … it’s older, white, and round. This is a remnant of the original bridge; the movable part of the span rotated on that pier.
I’ve gotta quit after this. This is going to be as deadly to my productivity as Wikipedia. Just think … I haven’t even started on the warbird and farming photos …
If they’d posted their whole collection of photos, I’d be unproductive through the month of June, probably. This is a great resource for railfans …
And this one isn’t a steam loco … but how many color pictures of diesel locomotives from the forties do you think exist? And at night too … I’m seeing shades of O. Winston Link here (well, except that it is color and a diesel …).
The Library of Congress has uploaded 3,000 public domain images from the 1940s to Flickr … and may eventually upload more of its collection. The photo above is one of the many that are already available; I found it while searching for “locomotive.”
There are also a number of images taken in Chattanooga as well. I had hoped to find some that had locomotives from the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis or Norfolk and Western railroads … but no such luck yet.
Many of the locomotive-related photos are eerily beautiful, like the ones below (the images are linked to their corresponding Flickr pages if you’re interested). And … they’re in color, which is especially cool for photographs from this era.
I really can’t get over the beauty of those last few.
Oh, and if you’d like a quick shortcut to the ‘home page’ of the photos, look no further: Flickr Photos from The Library of Congress.
Hat Tip: Reason Magazine
Since I posted one video of an operational steam locomotive, I thought I’d follow it with another video I dug up of Norfolk & Western’s 611 on a steam excursion run …
Last night, I found this nifty video of Nickel Plate 2-8-4 engine 765 being broken in after a complete rebuild.
Engine 765 is owned and operated by the Ft. Wayne Railroad Historical Society, and also happens to be the engine that’s shown in my blog header now.
Addendum: I also found out today that during this last rebuild, 765’s drive wheels were repaired right here in Chattanooga at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum.
Wow. I mean, WOW! (Note: I did NOT shoot this video.)
Oh how I wish there were an operational Norfolk & Western Y6b hanging around somewhere, but this will certainly do in its stead …
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