The good, the bad, the ugly, don't be shy!! Let's see that very first pic you took! Here's my #1! Polaroid's no less!! Sept. 1979, South Seattle. A SB BN train led by 2 F-Units, led by the 732 which would eventually be the last F-unit to run for BN in the west! My Father worked for the old Associated Grocers across Airport Way for 30 years and in the Summertime, I'd go to work with him and hang out to watch trains. Great times! .....and this was the second train behind it! Chop nose 1426 leading a B-unit on a SB freight. Never know what'd you see back then!!
Shots fired! The oldest? On some long lost instamatic prints. Oldest I've uploaded? Probably this 2004 steam excursion behind UP 3985 over Sherman Hill. First steam excursion ever. Photo taken with a 2 megapixel point&shoot camera. Underexposed, poor composition, etc.
I would love to post what should have been my first. A pair of N&W Y6's pounding through Roanoke, VA station in 1957 at the head end of a coal drag, with a third pushing. My camera was fully loaded and sitting on the front seat of my car maybe 10 feet away. To my defense, these were the first articulated locos I had ever seen, and I was in awe of the power, noise, and massiveness. They were a far cry from a NYC J-3 Hudson or S-1 Niagara.
My first photo was taken on May 19, 2001 while my daughter and I were chasing Frisco 1522 Mountain, 4-8-2, steam locomotive. We caught up with the locomotive near the Oklahoma Missouri state line and followed it to Claremore. Joe
In 1964, my dad and I visited Nelson Blount's Steam Town in Bellows Falls, Vermont. I had acquired a better camera than my old Brownie box. I think it was a Rolleiflex 120 that my mom let me borrow. The top popped open and you looked down into the view finder. It had two lenses in front, I think one was for the view finder and the other was for the shutter. Anyway, I shot up a roll of 120 film on old steam locomotives, many close up of running gear and such. Here are a few.
I wish I could! I sat down at the CNW depot in Carroll, IA and got some pics of the old wood roundhouse/ turntable, the local switch (SD or GP,) and several trains blowing by . . . Long lost!
Not for sure the first shot I took but in the first 5 for sure. This one was in Chattanooga TN 1982 ish
1955, Little Falls, NY, New York Central E units taken from an overpass. I wasn't even a railfan then--high school, but into photography and this was processed in my darkroom at the time, a refurbished coal bin in the cellar of our home.
Hmm, I didn't attach the photo, tried to edit and got "uploads not available" message. Try again with the pic.
My earliest shots are on Kodak 126-sized (square) Kodachromes and I don't have a slide scanner, so they sit in darkness. The two b&w snapshots below are pretty early though, from summer 1974 I think. A late friend and I rode a C&NW commuter train to Chicago and walked to Union Station. The first shot is of me and the second is of my quarry, a PC geep.
I'm fairly certain my first pictures were videos I shot in the late 2000s when I was around 12 or so. The first photographs that I can identify that I took coincided with my first excursion in 2010. I took a bunch of shots at the roundhouse up in Cheyenne. Don't recall which was the first, but below is one of the first, being UP fuel tender 903029.
