POTD - Classic Film

They say film is dead. Tell that to Chris May. A loaned camera, a roll of Tri-X film (Kodak black and white) and some time at Union Station with Amtrak's California Zephyr produced an opportunity to capture an image that feels timeless. "Union Station: Travel By Train." How many couples have stood on Union Station's platforms, Pullman coaches, engines and fellow passengers buzzing about them?◊

Photo of the Day: Chris May

POTD: A Classic Reborn and Lit With Elegance

Denver's Union Station was almost slated for a date with the wrecking ball in the early 1980s. Then, someone responded to the call and formed a group called Save Our Station. And thank God they did! After millions of passengers, Union Station was due for an overhaul and RTD needed some way to tie FasTracks into one neat bow. Look no further than the Beaux Arts classic great room of Denver Union Station.

After millions of passengers, Union Station was due for an overhaul and RTD needed some way to tie FasTracks into one neat bow. Look no further than the Beaux Arts classic Denver Union Station.
Photo of the Day: Christopher May 

Looking for all the world like a cross between a wedding cake and a grand library, the inside of Denver Union Station is something to behold. Christopher May captured the newly restored, antique elegance that rivals any rail hub of any city anywhere. The great hall has never looked better! The timed exposure almost leaves the impression that the area is deserted. Always open, even late on a summer night for this photograph, Union Station may never close again.

A great place for ColoRail to have a party! They are, after all, the ones who inherited Save Our Station.◊

POTD: Ghost Echoes of Steam Whistles Where Sunsets and Aspen Leaves Fall

You never know where you're going to run into a railroad. On the west side of Boreas Pass, not far from the roadbed of the Denver, South Park & Pacific narrow gauge railroad, Chris May took this beautiful sunset photograph of fall aspens and what I suspect to be Mount Lincoln, if not Quandary Peak, both 14ers above the fine resort town of Breckenridge.

Very little could seem to have changed from this sunset over Boreas Pass
to the time when the first steam whistles echoed over the Blue River Valley.
Photo: Christopher J. May

It could seem that the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad, later the Denver Leadville & Gunnison and then Colorado & Southern, is one of the "other" Colorado narrow gauge railroads, meaning not Denver & Rio Grande Western or Rio Grande Southern, two of the longest lived, most spectacular and most expansive narrow gauge railroads in America. But to think that they're the only roads would seem ...well, narrow minded.

The South Park, as it's called familiar, was considered a rival railroad to the Rio Grande for many years. Departing Denver for Waterton Canyon, it wended its way into its eponymous park by Kenosha Pass, where it built a roundhouse that still stands in Como. From there, a branch sprung across the Continental Divide over Boreas Pass to tap the mining towns of Breckenridge, Dillon, and a small mining hamlet called Keystone in Summit County.◊

Further Information

DSP&P Historical Society
DSP&P on Wikipedia
DSP&P for modelers

 

POTD - A New Way To See Things

It's been a while now since I've done some Photos of the Day, and it hasn't really been for lack of good photographs. I'm finding more, not less out there. Keep shooting and I'll keep posting!

D&RGW #683, the only standard gauge Rio Grande steam engine known to survive is
preserved at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado. The first outdoor
exhibit most encounter at the museum, the engine is quite popular with the young (and
young at heart) who want to ring the engine's bell.
Photo: Christopher J. May

Chris May takes today's Photo of the Day with this half-portrait of Rio Grande engine 683. For me, the vertical lines of the stack and horizontal lines of the top of the pilot combine with the half-circles of the headlight and boiler to make it interesting. While the foreground is almost completely monochrome and in focus, the background is awash with soft colors of every natural hue. The engine has been photographed by May "countless times" but this shot just occurred to him on the way to the car. Proof that "there's always a new way to see things..." ◊

POTD - Snow and Steam

Chris May, known popularly as GhoSStrider, is no stranger to POTD, but the last time he was featured he was chasing the Cheyenne Frontier Days special and his feature ran in early August! Quite the change here as he catches a volunteer dismount Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad engine 346 one cold December morning.

Photo: GhoSStrider

POTD - Maintenence

I said on Wednesday that it was a two-parter and this being Friday, I'm sure you're expecting something different. It is something different ...sort of. Actually, it's the same photographer, and the same subject, a steam engine, is involved, but that's where the similarities end.

Christopher May got my attention with this black-and-white image of two volunteers at the Colorado Railroad Museum during Shay Days. It is titled very simply, Maintenance, and it highlights a fundamental truth that it is not just a steam engine that works to keep the steel wheels in motion over steel rails. Each iron beast, steam or diesel, standard gauge or narrow, represents many, many man-hours of hard work, heat, pressure, oil and tools exhausted in keeping the rails plied with people, consumables and goods. Sometimes it's a gantry crane lifting a multi-ton assembly for a 2-dollar part replacement that gets focused attention. Today, it was near a cylinder on the geared drivetrain of a Shay locomotive at a narrow-gauge haven in Golden.

Incidentally, there are times when a photograph invites a black-and-white shot treatment, but this one fairly stands up and demands it. Great work, Chris!

West Side Lumber Shay engine #12 gets a hand or two during some Maintenance at
Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, CO on May 14, 2011 during "Shay Days."
Photo: Christopher May/GhoSStrider

POTD - An Hour Or Two Earlier Makes the Difference

Today's Photo of the Day is the second by GhoSStrider, as Christopher May is known on flickr. This was apparently on the same trip, taken earlier in the day as the sun was still in its sunrise mode. As you can see in comparison with yesterday's POTD, which was taken later, the passage of a "couple hours" can change everything. Change the light in color, angle or both, you change the photograph. The rich color really comes through, even with the grass and the grain elevator.

Northern Colorado, which varies in area with whom you ask, is part of the Colorado Front Range Urban Corridor. Despite this "urban" definition, the people and landscape of this strip between Cheyenne and Denver is a mix of semi-industrial, suburban, and commercial islands strung like pearls along the I-25, US 85, and US 287 lifelines linking the two cities, surrounded by vast agricultural ventures that epitomize rural, non-urban life. Any journey out east will tell you that urban isn't what they should call the Front Range piedmont. Coming out of Brighton as the 844 works its way north, the landscape shifts agrarian for the first but not the last time.

The best part--from a railfan's point of view--about the old Denver Pacific line is that, despite its history, it's not all that old. UP maintenance crews have kept this line in good shape, and the relatively level grade lets 844 pick up some speed on its way.

Union Pacific 4-8-4 #844 paces down the rails through Brighton on a beautiful
Saturday morning July 23, 2011 on her way to Cheyenne's Frontier Days in WY
Photo: GhoSStrider

POTD - Terry Ranch Road

Today's picture of the day comes from last Saturday's Cheyenne Frontier Days special chartered by the Denver Post. Chris (GhoSStrider on flickr) has been building himself up as another of Colorado's young and talented railroad photographers for several years now. He deserves a two-parter, the second you will see tomorrow.

Denver Post's Cheyenne Frontier Days Special approaches Terry Ranch Road, just
north of the Colorado border on its final miles to Cheyenne Frontier Days 7/23/11
Photo: GhoSStrider

UP, BNSF Put On Show During DNC

Christopher May, one of the better contemporary rail photographers in Denver, went downtown to capture a mini-convention of trains currently in town for the Democratic National Convention that wraps up tonight at Mile High.

Capturing the night shots in front of Union Station can be a challenge but the results, as you can see on his page, can be magical if you do it right. He notes, "Lighting was mostly ambient, but I was adding some fill light with multiple blasts with a hand-held Canon 299T flash on some shots, though."

Very impressive, Chris!