Steamtown National Historic Site (part 3)

Posted on July 27, 2020

This should be the last post on the Steamtown National Historic Site. Again concentrating on the Railyard where the rusting trains are stored. This area has live tracks with active trains going around the tracks with the relics off to the side. Which seems strange to allow people to wander around. It also seems odd because the museum is pristine and this area is completely opposite! But it Very interesting to see & photograph!

Trains on active tracks

Above images are images of rusting old snow removal engines. Cannot image these going down the tracks. One is a snow plow, the other a massive snow thrower. The Snow Thrower blades were HUGE.

In the middle of all the rusting trains was this huge elevated walkway to take you to the “Mall at Steamtown” which seemed a little strange in the middle of all the rusting trains. But it had an interesting Strange geometric look in all the rust & decay! Reminds me of a metal bug with legs!

Category: Blog, Favorite Locations, Historic sites, Steamtown National Historic Site Tagged: Canon 1D MkIII, canon 24-105mm f/4 lens, rust, rusting old trains, steamtown, Steamtown National Historic Site, trains

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Steamtown National Historic Site (part 2)

Posted on July 26, 2020

Another post on Steamtown National Historic Site. This one is concentrating on the Railyard with Trains & Rail Cars in storage, waiting to be restored or maybe for parts. This area was actually more interesting to see and photograph. A lot textures and rust! And a lot of photo subjects.

_Maps - Steamtown National Historic Site

Steamtown Map showing facilities

I put this image in again to explain how I did this multi-image Handheld panorama. This was different because I was very close to my large subject. Usually my Panorama subjects or landscapes are way off in the distance. I just shoot a series of images, shooting from a somewhat center position, panning left to right. But because I was so close and not a lot of room to back up, I did a Foot Pano. I just shot an image at certain overlapping sections as I walked down the length of the long tender. This way I would not get more distortions on the ends of the pano from shooting with a wide angle lens shooting centered to the tender.

Category: Blog, Historic sites, Panorama & Stacked Images, Steamtown National Historic Site, Tips & Techniques Tagged: canon 24-105mm f/4 lens, old trains, panoramas, rusting trains, scranton pa, steamtown, Steamtown National Historic Site, train graveyard, train museum, trains

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Steamtown National Historic Site (part 1)

Posted on July 25, 2020

I was going through backup hard drives looking for an image an old client needed and I came across these images taken many years ago when a friend took me to Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, PA. I thought it would be interesting since it is hard to travel far for interesting destinations to photograph at the moment. Steamtown National Historic Site is a railroad museum and heritage railroad located on 62.48 acres in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the site of the former Scranton yards of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. In non Covid times you can actually book trips on some of these to select destinations hours away. I was not really interested in trains (they don’t have wings!), but he convinced me it would be a great day. And it was! It is an amazing place to photograph. Talk about Heavy Metal! I did not know what to expect so I brought a few lenses, but he laughed at me when I included a 70-300mm lens. In the end I only used a 24-105mm zoom. Probably should have included the 12-24mm, but with these huge subjects wide angle distortion would have looked strange. But it was definitely a fun day to Explore & Photograph! There were interesting subjects, details and trains all over the site. But my favorites were the rusting hulks in the storage train track areas waiting to be restored or maybe there for parts. But you have to be aware & careful because off in the rusting hulks there are active train tracks. In this post I will concentrate mostly on restored ones, but I will put in a few rusting ones! Tomorrow I will feature the rusting ones!