Thursday, April 19, 2012

Old Photos of a Young Railroader

Well it has been four months since I posted on the blog and to be honest not much progress has been made on the layout.  I have been working on installing the remaining Tortoise machines on the first level, working on a few structures and doing too many non-layout activities.

During this time I rediscovered some old photographs my father took.  My dad really enjoyed photography and would take both color slides and black and white print film.  He developed the print film himself and printed the film using enlargers in a small darkroom in the garage.  The photographs here were taken using Kodachrome 25 and the colors are still great. 

As a family we would often travel from the family home near Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles and visit some of the sites like Olvera Street across from Union Station and Chinatown just north of there.  When we visited Chinatown we would often visit the Southern Pacific Yard just southeast of Broadway.  The yard was known as both the Bull Ring (east end) and Corn Field (west end).  At the time we visited there was a wooden pedestrian bridge across the yard from North Broadway to North Spring Street.  Here is a shot of my sister and I on the bridge.
I think the date is about 1953.  Notice what looks like a New York Central Pacemaker boxcar behind us.  If you look closely you will see that it is a standard boxcar-red painted car with a weathered black tank car on the track just toward the camera from it.  You can just make out the dome on the tank car if you click on the photo and make it larger.  My dad took some shots from the bridge while we were there.  Here is a shot of Southern Pacific switcher 2533 working in the yard.



Now I know it is taking me a long time to get my layout up and running but just so you know I have really been working on it a long time here is a photo of my sister helping me with some new track and trains.  I think the date is sometime in 1952.




So much for old photos.  I will try to get a bit more work done on the current layout and post some progress photos soon.