First of all, let us hope that this meeting goes better than the last one I presided over (where the womens club took over our meeting room & ate the cookies I'd brought & drank the coffee I'd made). For the program this month, I have a DVD that was made for me by MAINLINE VIDEOS. It is a transfer of some movies that I began making about 1964 on the Erie-Lackawanna. I had recieved a Super 8 movie camera for my birthday & began buying film & running it off around Binghamton NY. I also shot film on the NYC Harlem division from the cab approaching Grand Central Station. There's some PRR at Newark, NJ & Newark, Delaware, & finally some of the OLD Auto-Train. PROBLEMS.............the camera didn't have sound, so I will have to narrate and I CAN'T imitate GP9s too well. (If only I had a videocamera in the 60s) I was surprised by the extent of stuff there was including a cabride on BS51 - the Binghamton-Syracuse thru freight the old EL ran daily. It was wierd to see Marathon, Cortland & other stations go by looking down the hood of the Gray, Maroon & Yellow Geep & finally see the old Syracuse passenger station pass & see the freight yards come into view as they did many times when I worked this job. I'll apologize in advance for the mistakes in filming short snippets of trains. In those days I was always thinking of the cost of developing the film & I also didn't use a tripod (an impossibility in the enginecab). What makes up for it is the rarity of some of the stuff. My wife & I went p on the old Auto-Train & when we got to Lorton, I stopped by Potomac Yard & filmed a RF&P job pushing cars up the hump........I then went to my 35mm camera & took slides of power on the pit tracks. I wish I'd taken more movies there, since it (Pot Yard) is gone now. As I've said before, I'm an engineer, not a photographer and it's just lucky that I carried my camera in my grip and took some fotos here & there. I wish I'd taken thousands more, but I did have about 400 feet or more of movie film and most of it's on this DVD. I'll see you all at the meetiing. Regards to all, Walter E. Smith President/FEC Chapter - NRHS _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ ------------------------------
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