Both how easy and difficult and easy was if for rail fans during the transitional era?

[Engi1487]

 As a 26 year old, I have to admit I am a bit jeaulous of how lucky railfans and those interested in rail transport where back during the transitional era, and even during after that until the 80s where even in the area where I live there was still a good abundance of rail traffic. The tracks where I live now are railway beds, and I walk on them often pondering what it was like when they still would have sat where I walked, being several feet above me on top of ballast.

 I am starting my journey of railfanning, despite the nearest railway tracks being an hour to an hour and a half apart from where I live. However I wish to ask for my first question on the Classic Trains forum today, how different, difficult and easy was it for railfans to locate trains to see and document them with cameras and video recoding equipment of the time.

 One example is a experimental steam tbine locomotive I have a facination with, and is my favoruite of the steam turbines is the PRR 6-8-6 S2 steam tubine locomotive build by Baldwin locomotive works for the PRR. While there are plenty of photographs of the PRR S2, the only footage that exists of it is exiting a station and no sound. The only sound we will ever hear of it is the Broadway limited imports HO model with its paragon 3 sound.

 I had an idea. Lets say that your a young guy, maybe around you late teens or early twenies living somewhere on the PRR system during the very late to early fiftys when the PRR S2 was still in use. Your interest in trains starts a young adult when you open a page of Popular science and see this image and the article about it.

 Your interest in trains grows and you decided to start railfanning, and have your drivers license, income to afford fuel and vehicle to travel around. However being that the transitional era is happening in the railway insutry, and with steam locomotives being phased out with first generation diesels, you realize time is short to document steam.

You buy your own camera and video camera, the best you can afford because you want your shots to look as cinamaticlly good as possible for future home films and future railfans to see. However, there are a few problems.

1. How would you record sound?
2. How could you estimate the locomotives assigned route, and time of whe. it would pass by the location your at.
3. Would the railway company, being the PRR have an issue with you asking about it, and helping you on your quest to document the seemingly last days of this engine? Could other railfans help you, and those interested in trains such as you?

I hope I explained this scenario as best I could. But compared to the information rich yet lacking in a variety of roads & trains world we have today, compared to the train rich yet diffcult to get information era of yesterday, did rail fans in some aspects have it both hard and easier?

 

 

 

[Overmod]

The best solution in the heyday of the S2 would have been 16mm commercial equipment with optical recording.  Microphone arrays might have been critical; our Dave Klepper can advie you on theory and might (although this is a decade before his firsthand experience) know the best specific equipment.  See what Movietone and other companies adopted in the early 'talkie' era...

These were still the days of wire recorders, although some early tape was available; I don't think much of this was terrific high resolution.  There were portable acetate-cutting Scully lathe rigs, with enough capacity for a pass, and the sound captured thus could be synchronized to film easily.

PRR was notably proud of the S2 all the way into 1947, and there are letters preserved at the Hagley specifically answering questions (and correcting perceived misconceptions).  There would be no official objection to giving you schedule information ... when it could be known; your best bet would be to cultivate a friendship with people concerned with PRR engine oerations and have them telephone when 6200 had been assigned to a given train, or was to be tested somewhere.

You needed a special pass to ride the cab, which was usually specifically dated with limits -- I o not know how difficult these were to get on PRR, but folks in the PRR groups would likely know.  While you might be invited up 'on the sly' by a crew you knew, this would be unlikely with camera or recording equipment.

Access trackside was severely limited in the early S2 years because of wartime concerns of espionage.  I'm sure the S2 was touted as new war-winning technology and hence the object of stricter 'scrutiny' by the suspicious; I have no idea how this would be practically treated for railfans.  Postwar, there were far fewer 'trespassing' restrictions unless you went somewhere really unsafe or caused problems for crews or operations ... some railroaders, then as now, don't like having their picture taken.  In general you'd have little problem setting up and would more likely get a wave and perhaps a whistle show than trouble. 

[daveklepper]

I've been away from the USA for 25 years, but correspondance regulaly with friends and for the past 20 years by email have kept me informed of the "railfan situation."

Not only railfans, but while he was still alive, Leonard J. Bernstein, the fnormer D&RGW Passenver Traffic Manager, and then Amtrak contact man, kept up a regular correspondence with me.  Also two professinals still active.

On that basis, I would say that we of an earlier time had "a ball" compared to what young railfans experience today.

I thought I was pretty hot stuff with my Boston and Maine employee's pass good on locomotives during my Senior year at MIT 1952-1953.  But my classmate the llate Mort Grosser, who was a fellow East Campus resident until he married a classmate, told me all he had to do was go to South Station and hitch a ride on a New Haven 0-6-0 switcher any time he wished to do so!  By then it was diesels and less interesting for him.  As a Freshman, I shared the cramped cab of a Forest Hills - Everett elevated train (now much altered the Orange Line) with MTA motorman Bill Kenny.  Got to run a streetcar numerous occasions in The Bronx age 15, 1947.  Cab ride with Bill Hastings much much later, GN Criookston - Grand Forks, 1969, Amtrak Engineer Noel Weaver inviting me for a GG1 cab-ride New Haven - NY-Penn around 1974 (the exact date was the 100th Anniversary of the formation by mergers of the NYNH&H), on a ERA fan-trip that I helped to arrange, ran the IRT Nostalgia Low-V train on the "6" line from Hunts Point Avenue station to Elders Lane station, making the right on the marker stops at the intermediate stations.  And more!   None of this would be possible today because of regulations, intense supervision, insurance requirements, or at least not without a lot of paperwork and form sigining.

Recording has not much changed.  What today is digital was magnetic tape.  And fortunately decent battery-powered tape recorders did arrive on the scene early enough to capture the sounds of steam power.  Brad Miller kept up-to-date with the best condenser microphones and wind-screens and made excellent recordings.  My own recording experiences involved worship spaces and concert halls, and I regarded Brad Miller as a friend and the expert in railroad recording.

Some of us think that the loss of Kodachrome has not been compensated by the digital photographic revolution.  But I for one do enjoy getting the best out of old torn, mutilated, and faded photos, and that somewhat compensates for my physical isolation from the North American railroad scene, and the digital revolution makes it possible.

 I hope that North American railroading will make a real comback.

When I moved to Jerusalem, 24 years ago, I never expected to be able to ride a streetcar any time I wanted to.   And I can and usually make such a ride part of my evening commute, sometimes morning as well.

So maybe your lifetime will have pleasant suprises!

[Flintlock76]

You know there's been a generational shift when someone refers to old home movies as "videos!"  

We do have to be grateful for those railfans years ago who spent the money on good quality 16mm cameras and film, and the cameras weren't cheap!  A good one could set you back a weeks pay!

I used to enjoy shooting 16mm home movies, but I was a bit lucky.  Used 16mm cameras were very resonable, I don't think I paid more than $25 to $50 dollars for one, and the film was fairly reasonable as well.  That changed when home video cameras came along, even though the video quality wasn't that good, 16mm Kodachrome film made video look sick!  But that didn't last, improvements in video kept coming.

I gave up on 16mm in the early 90's when the film just got too expensive, $50 for a 100 foot roll, then another $50 to get it developed, and after that you only had six minutes of movie.  It just wasn't worth it anymore.

I found out recently 16mm movie film is still available, but it's still heart-stoppingly expensive, so I won't be picking it up again. 

[wjstix]

In the "olden days" railroads were more part of everyday life. Many folks had relatives working for a railroad, and railroads had ads in newspapers and magazines about their newest passenger trains, improved freight service, new equipment etc. But of course there was no internet, so it was all paper or 'word of mouth'. That's why it was so beneficial to join a railfan club (or model railroad club or group like the NMRA) so knowledge could be shared among members.

A big difference is the post-9/11 security 'issues' didn't exist, where even railfans taking pictures from a public road or sidewalk might be hasseled by security guards or railroad police or whoever. In many cases you could walk into a roundhouse and ask if it was OK to take pictures and the foreman would say "sure, just don't get run over". I've seen pics from smaller railroads where the roundhouse crew would even move an engine out in the sun so a fan could take a picture of it.

[Flintlock76]

According to the late Don Ball getting access to rail facilities in the old days wasn't too difficult as long as you contacted the railroad ahead of time and signed a release form absolving the railroad from any injuries you might receive, usually due to your own foolishness.  Roundhouse and shop foremen usually didn't care what you did in there as long as you were careful and didn't interfere with operations.  

There were some railfan-unfrendly 'roads of course.  One railfan photographer who's name eludes me now said the way he got his pictures was by looking like he belonged on the property, that is, he dressed the part of a railroad official, suit and tie with a fedora hat or sometimes just a leather jacket with the fedora.  "Look like you belong there and no-one will bother you!"  

Needless to say those days are gone.  Security concerns aside considering this lawsuit-happy society we live in now I can't blame the railroads for keeping outsiders off the property no matter who they are.