52 Rolls Week 13:52

Doing much better this week.  We had a workshop @ the Colorado Railroad Museum with local artist Eli Vega. He has a unique take of photography, having started as a painter.

We’ll start with Engine 5629 of the Chicago Burlington Line, Decommissioned in 1962.  One of the last Steam Engines in service.  Note to self, when another photographer is hogging the scene, use them for scale.

A really famous train line:  The Santa Fe Railroad ‘Super Chief’, started service in 1936 to compete with a new Union Pacific Line.  The Super Chief featured a diesel-electric engine  (The Streamliner) and held the speed record for the Chicago to Los Angeles run during the 1930’s at 39.75 hours.  Before the death of passengers trains in the U.S., the railroads, although primarily a freight business, competed to have the fastest passenger lines on popular routes.  The fastest Express Lines (i.e nonstop) were known as ‘Crack Trains’.

The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad was a famous local narrow gauge line.  Most of the local lines in Colorado, especially those that served the mining towns were narrow gauge (tracks only 3 feet wide).  Parts of this line are still operated as a Heritage Railroad.  Unfortunately most narrow gauge lines were abandoned by the late 1930’s and the tracks were torn up to make steel during WWII. Many of these ‘right of ways’ now provide access to the high mountains as 4-wheel drive roads.  We’ll visit some of these places later in the summer.

Now just some miscellaneous shots around the Museum…………

Above, detail of the ‘cow catcher’ for Engine 191 (shown below).

Since the Holga is lacking a wide angle lens I had to be creative in a tight space.

Above, the Galloping Goose, basically a bus on rails (above)…….operated for about 25 years serving mountain towns along the Rio Grande Southern Railroad.

Ending with an ‘artsy’ shot of chains at the rail yard…………

Tech Info:Holga 120s with orange filter; Kodak T-Max 400; Developed and scanned by OldSchoolPhotoLab.

I’ll update my post with a link to my Mamiya 645 images of the Museum once I start posting them……