Canadian Trackside Guide® 2014
The ONLY comprehensive guide to Canadian railways,
includes U.S. based operations. 5½” x 8½” 736 pages
$39.95 (American addresses)
$35.95 (Canadian addresses) (all ppd., taxes included
Locomotives of CN (including IC, WC, GTW, B&LE, DW&P, EJ&E, DMIR), CPR, VIA, Regional & Shortline railways, plus all Industrial locomotives;
Urban Rail Transit, Passenger Cars, Cabooses; Preserved Canadian Locomotives & Equipment; Work Service Cars & other Non-revenue Equipment; VIA, Commuter and Excursion Train schedules; Subdivision details for all railways: station names, mileposts, radio frequencies, talking detector locations, divisional maps, detailed maps of major rail centres;
Passenger Equipment
BY GAY LEPKEY 8.5” x 11” hard cover
$49.95 (all ppd.,taxes included)
This 2nd volume features additional details on CNR passenger equipment: Great for a CNR fan or modeller with 249 B&W equipment photos, 297 car diagrams, a listing of preserved equipment and details on passenger car technology.
(U.S. Orders in U.S. Funds) Send Cheque or Intl Money Order to:
BYTOWN RAILWAY SOCIETY P.O. Box 47076, Ottawa, ON Canada K1B 5P9 Or order online at:
www.bytownrailwaysociety.ca
Extra South
Take a fond look back at Dixie steam railrading. From the Clinchfield to the C&O, from the Virginian to the N&W, you’ll explore pokey branch lines, obscure short lines, and a few main lines. Enjoy 143 pages of rare steam action photos. Order this Carstens Classic today!
RAILROADING SOFTCOVER
$21.95 PLUS S&H - ITEM #00053 Carstens PUBLICATIONS, INC.
CARSTENSBOOKSTORE.COM (888) 526-5365
12 MAY 2014 •
RAILFAN.COM
While NO TRESPASSING signs are common on railroad property, this one outside the Escanaba and Lake Superior shops in Escanaba, Mich, gets right to the point!
DIXIE STEAM National Railways
A Companion to Canadian
Good, Bad and Ugly Rail Photography
THE 1966 CLINT EASTWOOD movie The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is one of the iconic American western movies. It (along with two prequels featuring Clint in the same “Man With No Name” role) started a trend to overly realistic western portrayals. Three misfits, the “Ugly” (Eli Wallach as the rascally and treacherous Mexican bandit “Tuco”); the “Bad” (Lee Van Cleef as the sin- ister gun for hire “Angel Eyes”), and the “Good” (bounty hunter Clint, called “Blondie” by Tuco) work against each other, then in tandem to find buried gold. (When the conniving Clint was labeled the “Good” on the screen it brought sarcastic laughter from the audience.) If you have not seen the movie (available on DVD), I will not ruin it for you with further details here. Okay, so what does all this strolling down
movie memory lane have to do with railfan photography? There are good, bad and ugly aspects of photographing trains, and how we respond to each can give us interesting pho- tographs, or help avoid an unpleasant expe- rience.
The Ugly The ugliest of the ugly in railroading are train wrecks, especially when people are killed or injured. But like Tuco’s devious ac- tions being interesting, while we never hope for a wreck the aftermath is certainly inter- esting to photograph. And while it is always sad to see a derelict locomotive sitting in a weedy section of the yard, maybe stripped down for parts (espe- cially true at the end of steam, when long lines of those magnificent machines waited for the scrapper’s torch) these rusting hulks along with abandoned facilities and weed
grown, rusty rails can add a bit of rail nos- talgia to our photography collections.
The Bad Graffiti on railcars, like Angel Eyes who had no endearing qualities, is plain bad. Graffiti dates back to early railroaders writing on car sides with chalk to communicate with other workers. In the depression years, ho- bos riding the rails used chalk graffiti to ad- vise where to find handouts or work possibil- ities in a town. What is today often called “tagging” started in the 1970s, when inex- pensive spray paint cans made it easy for vandals and juvenile gangsters to leave their “tag” or “mark” on buildings and sub- way trains, then in rail yards. While graffiti falls under the laws govern-
ing criminal mischief, property destruction, vandalism, and trespassing, and can be ei- ther a petty offense, misdemeanor, or a felony with penalties of several hundred dol- lars and jail time, it has become almost ubiq- uitous. Graffiti devalues rail cars and dam- ages the public appearance of the railroad. Clean-up can cost in the millions of dollars a year, yet railroads cannot simply ignore graffiti if it covers federally required report- ing marks and car data. Because of the re- painting expense, a railroad may simply paint over and restencil only where report- ing marks are obscured, rather than repaint an entire car. But similar to some movie critics’ re-
sponse to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly being critical and some praising, the public response to graffiti on railcars also has gone both ways. Some artists and photographers (not railfans) take photos of graffiti to en- hance digitally in their art. Books and web-
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