Author: Joe

Hayes Still Bumping

Trees are being cleared out near a walking trail just east of the former C&O yard location in town. I found an old Hayes Bumping post on the side on the embankment. A few weeks later it it was pulled out by heavy machinery, and it looks like it it will be preserved, I hope. The Western-Cullen-Hayes plant is just a few hundred yards away, and they still are making these. Rail traffic was cut of to this area years back, though. There is another one in the wild on the South side of Richmond, but cut off from the line. http://www.wch.com/pdf/catalog/bpfacts.pdf

The Zephyr Mafia

One of the great things about benching freights is occasionally seeing work by old school NYC Subway Legends up close and in-person, in my own small city. Recently there was a hopper layed-up in town with a Zeph fill-in. (Zephyr has been an active graffiti writer and fine artist since the late 1970s, and is a published author. A few years back the IMA hosted a traveling art exhibition called “City as Canvas” from the Martin Wong collection, and he was included in the show.) I could see the train from a distance, and thought it may be a Zephyr, but maybe not. Before I could get over to it, a train rolled through town at high speed, and on that train another Zeph piece rolled by. After the train rolled by, I walked over to the alleged Zeph hopper. The closer I got, I realized it was an authentic Zeph fill-in. I caught two freights by the graffiti legend in 5 minutes. http://zephyrgraffiti.com/

  • Zephyr, 1982, City as Canvas, IMA, 2017
  • Zephyr, 1982, City as Canvas, IMA, 2017

Coal Delivery

About 10 years ago we got coal service to our power-plant. It was delivered from Indianapolis in freshly repainted coal hoppers and it only lasted a few years. It was a nice change of pace for taking flicks. The Sufr Anx, I also caught it a few times driving through Indianapolis, and a friend of mine saw it, also.

Film Developing

One thing I’ve always loved is getting film back from the developer. Although, I mostly shoot digital now, I still shoot film from time to time. The “drugstore” 1hr photo labs and send-out places have really gone down hill, so I tend to accumulated a lot of rolls of film to be processed. So, recently when I had some extra money I sent 20 rolls out to a mail-in developing place. One of the rolls was blank, but other than that they turned out all right. Here are some scans from the prints I got back. These were taken in 2012-14, and I didn’t edit the scans other than resizing, so they can be viewed how the really look, washed out or too dark, just like pictures old point-and-shoot 35mm cameras actually produce.