I ran a railfan cruise up the Hudson River yesterday. New York City to Cold Spring and back, an 80 mile r/t. About 90 people bought tickets. Weather was perfect and we had a front row seat for numerous shots of CR, MNCR and AMTK running along the shore. Had the unbelievable luck of catching AMTK twice crossing the bridge at the northern tip of Manhattan, once in the morning with a Turboliner set and later on the return trip with a Genesis-powered train. Motor drives were ROARING!
Best sequence of the day was a CR southbound on the west shore under the Bear Mountain Bridge, followed seconds later by a northbound MNCR on the east shore with double-headed FL9's, the lead unit in NH paint. The ship rocked so violently as everybody raced from one side to the other that I thought it was going to flip over and we would have the railfan version of the Poseidon Adventure! An informal survey of the photo equipment: Manual cameras outnumbered autofocus. Minolta SRT's, Pentax Spotmatics, Nikon F's. One gentleman even had an Exakta. Modern autofocus equipment was mostly represented by Canon models. Most common lens was a 75-200mm zoom. In many cases a 300mm lens was required, but only one photographer brought one. (I doubt if many casual railfans ever have the need for more than 200mm.) I was busy with a lot of things all day and didn't want to bring too much equipment. I shot E100 with a Mamiya 645 and a 150mm, and had an old Mamiya "U" (p&s) in my coat pocket with loaded with color print film. Bernie Ente, Director Conrail Historical Society [EMAIL PROTECTED] --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects
