Old Leicas for Old Railroad Photography
These photographs from a number of years ago are of a steam-powered excursion train and locomotive, both before and after its arrival at Vermont’s Chester Depot RR station, following one of its sightseeing runs starting from Bellows Falls VT.
Although working with Leica M cameras professionally at the time, plus a couple of SLRs, I have always kept two SM Leicas in a small bag for personal projects, usually have a 35 and 50 combination on them. That day, however, I made sure to include a super-wide 21 for one specific purpose: a close three-dimensional picture of the massive pistons, wheels, and driving rods that provided the motive force of this 4-6-4 locomotive No. 1246, which I had seen it before, but only at a distance. The idea was to work from the shadowed side, using only the reflected highlights to outline the major components and eliminating all the myriad of details in the shadows, making it easier to see the major outlines of the machinery. The picture was also to show a real working locomotive, not a polished museum example.
This was in 1979, while the Bellows Falls VT “Steamtown” museum attraction was providing a steam locomotive for this run. A little time later, after the unfortunate death of its founder, Steamtown was moved to Scranton PA, where it is today, so these particular pictures stayed in the files instead of going to the usual New England regional magazines that I did stories for. The seasonal excursion run from Bellows Falls to Chester Depot does continue to this day, but using diesel power, under the name “Green Mountain Flyer.” And there is also an occasional winter run as the “Santa Express.”
What caused me to search out these old pictures was a photographer friend recently mentioning his interest in the publicity surrounding the rollout of the rebuilt Union Pacific R.R.”Big Boy” locomotive, although he wasn’t able to attend. His story reminded me of these pictures. And, since steam railroads have been seen in many shows in recent years – perhaps starting with Thomas the Tank Engine and Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Express, and going on to more recent videos of newly restored antique 19th century Welsh Highland and Isle of Wight and other English and even U. S. steam excursion trains being aired on YouTube, etc. – they have served to revive nostalgic memories in the public about the old days of steam, this might be a good time to see what a couple of Leica SM cameras and lenses were able to do with this old-time subject.
A 50mm f/2 Summitar lens on a Illc camera was used a little way out in the countryside to get the classic picture of an approaching steam train, the “normal” focal length being used to avoid any undue wide-angle exaggeration or telephoto compression of the train. The 50 was then used at the center of town to show the engine crossing the main street into the station. Film in the 50mm camera was its usual all-purpose ISO 100 Plus-X, with an lmarect finder used for accurate full-frame composition.
The 21 mm f/4 Super-Angulon was on the second camera, a black-dial lllf, which was loaded with ISO 400 Tri-X film that day to deal with the dim light on the shadowed side of the engine, and be able to provide the needed depth of field at a hand-holdable shutter speed. Viewing was with one of the excellent 21 mm Leitz optical brightline viewfinders, which I’ve always liked. They not only give accurate composition in an easy-to-see smaller frame but are also unusually good at keeping the pictures level while seeing and keeping verticals straight at the edges of the frame.
My thanks to good friend Terry Maltby, LHSA, for jogging my memory about this railroad coverage, as well as his very kind scanning of these negatives for digital printing by means of his Leica T, 60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R, and light box