Valley Railroad Photo Charter – Part 1 of 3

Yes, it’s been a while since the last “real” photo blog post. So we’ll go back in time here to May when I attended a three part, two day photo charter on the Valley Railroad in Essex, CT (I mentioned this charter back in this post about turning VALE 3025 in Old Saybrook).  The charter was put on by Lerro Productions of Pennsylvania and featured the Valley’s newest locomotive – former Chinese SY, now New Haven-ized No. 3025 pulling around a pair of trainsets over the two days.  The first day was to have a freight train, and the second day a passenger consist, then sandwiched in between those two was to be a night shoot for a smaller group of photographers.  Here’s the story from the first day of running up and down the Connecticut River valley along the former New Haven Railroad in the rain.

Lerro Productions photo charters are famous for the numerous photo setups and runbys along the railroad that attempt to bring the past to life today.  To get all those scenes into a relatively short period of time a somewhat grueling schedule is laid out for those who elect to attend all of the sessions.  But in the end, it’s all worth it.

The first day of the 2012 Valley Railroad photo charter featured the Valleys’ newest 2-8-2, No 3025, pulling a freight consist up and down the Connecticut River valley. Tacked on the end of the freight train was a single coach to ferry around the 30 or so photographers, which was dropped out of view for most of the shots that were taken over the course of the day.  Unfortunately, though, the weather wasn’t the greatest – with a solid overcast accentuated by periodic rain showers stretched over both days of the event.  But that didn’t slow things down – that just changed plans a bit, taking out of the equation a number of sunset/sunrise shots that were planned for the two days.  Oh, well – not a huge loss…

We managed to shoot at a number of locations between Essex and Haddam, including the Valley mainstays like Goodspeed station, Deep River Creek, Tate’s Cut and the meadow north of Essex station.  And for some of these shots actors, along with cars from the 1950s and 60s were used as props to enhance the scenes.

After the day was done, there was enough time to grab a hot meal and get back to Essex for the night shoot.  But the night shoot will come in the next post.  Here’s the shots from the daylight freight train consist – 65 in all.

Thanks for looking!
Tom

2012 Valley Railroad Photo Charter – Day 1

65 photos