PC Three Photo Challenge

 Hello,

We're having some fun with a new feature, the Three Photo Challenge in which we attempt to replicate (or at least approximate) three photos from this year's Penn Central Railroad Historical Society calendar.  John, Neal, and myself each selected three of the twelve images from the 2022 calendar and took photos on our layouts emulating the scenes pictured.

The Penn Central Railroad Historical Society's calendar is a very nicely made collection of full color photos from the PC era printed on good quality card stock.  It can be purchased from the PCRRHS using this link:

https://www.pcrrhs.org/store/calendar

While there, check out the rest of the site and consider joining!

It was a fun challenge to pick three photos to emulate and I did find some possible options.  My photo submissions for the challenge are not exact replicas by any means but they try to capture the spirit of the originals.  I will not be posting photos from the calendar itself in order to be mindful of copyright.

Appropriately enough, we are posting photos of Penn Central modeling today on February 1st, the anniversary of the 1968 merger between the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad! 

OK, here goes! 

#1 March 2022.  The calendar photo shows PC E8A #4034 on the point of a three car passenger train passing McKinley Tower in Canton, OH in 1970.   The original photo features a tower with some low buildings in the background with lots of blue sky.  I set up a passenger train with an E8A near my own WM Tower.  I edited out structures seen above the retaining wall and colored the area blue to try to approximate this sunny day photo of a small train.

#2 October 2022 The calendar photo features FL9 #5028  on a Harmon Line passenger train at Bedford Falls, NY.  The FL9 is wearing the MTA yellow and blue but, as happened to some of these units, the yellow nose faded to white over time.  It is seen next to a passenger station with a row of several parked automobiles. I kit bashed an FL9 from a pair of F7A shells several years ago and it was fun to pull it out of the box and give it some camera time.  I photo-shopped the FL9's double headlight and added a number of autos to the scene to mimic the original photo

#3 December 2022  The calendar shot is from the winter of 1969 featuring a pair of GP40s; the second unit running cab backward with an orange C logo, followed by an F7A also running backwards.  I pulled out the photo-shopping stops in this one to turn my summer weather layout into a snow covered landscape.  The original photo includes a line of autoracks rolling behind the consist.  Not having any HO scale versions of those cars I cropped the shot behind the locomotives.  The calendar photo shows the train running under a bridge.  The best I could do with that was to have the train emerge from the overpass in Kings Port on my layout.   Should I mention that my photo is taken from the other side of the train compared to the original?   It is an approximation, remember!  :)

 I'm not sure how successful I was in emulating the three selected photos but it was fun to give it a try!

Check in on John's New York Central Train Layout  and Neal's Atlantic Pacific R.R.  to see their submissions for the 3 Photo Challenge!

Anyone heard anything about prizes?  :)