The importance of photography in documenting the railroad landscape is heightened by the rapid changes now taking place within the industry. Bob Hughes reflects on "Preserving the Past" as he uses modern technology to bring back to life badly deteriorated slides from the collection of renowned railroad photographer, T.J Donahue. Read the entire article today on The Trackside Photographer, the website dedicated to the railroad landscape.

http://thetracksidephotographer.com/201 ... -the-past/

I am very grateful to anyone who does this, because unlike the quote in the associated article, I don't find the process "easy and fun." I find it tedious and time consuming. And that is just to get the scanned photo to a state where it is pleasant to look at. Or a tape, when I've converted one to a digital format, that can be listened to without introduced weird metallic whooshing noises.

Very few of the automatic processes (scratch, colour cast, click, pop removal etc) that are available can be used in "set and forget" mode; you have to work your way through the digitized data on a computer very carefully to make sure you are not losing valuable material. Steam is especially bad I've found, the noises a loco makes are very like the junk that automatic computer processes are tuned to getting rid of. You have to do it "by hand," manually, which takes ages.

The final results can be stunning and make it worthwhile for that special item. Just don't expect to convert your whole slide collection over a weekend!