In 1983, one WGRF member accompanied me and three other friends on a month-long trip to southern Africa to photograph steam in regular service in South Africa and Zimbabwe. In 1984, this individual also accompanied me and another friend on a 3-week, self-guided tour of Turkey in search of steam in regular service. Since circa 2000, this friend moved from southern California to Chile, where he now lives with his Chilean wife and son.

Another WGRF member has made something like 20+ trips to Australia, primarily to record images of Australian diesels in service in northwest Australia on its iron range railways. This same guy has also visited the Baltic States there to photograph diesels in regular service.

The former colleague who worked under me, and in whose company the Port Huron & Detroit Alco was photographed, prior to joining our company, had made field service trips to Israel for EMD, his former employer.

So, although the primary interest of WGRF members was the exposure of premium diesel roster shots principally in USA, Canada and, for some, Mexico, many of these guys are also interested in other aspects of railways globally.

Wish I could give Sammy a like for that. Absolutely true about having a physical image as opposed to only an electronic or digital one. My audio tapes from the 70s are shot, and my video tapes from the late '80s early '90s are fading.

This is a nice, broad-brush pronouncement.

It's also misleading.

The reality is that the "value" of any such archive is dependent upon the work put into it.

I'm currently dealing with a collection of a deceased railfan that, to put it bluntly, didn't do it right. He was trackside during the 1960s through the 1980s, documenting, among other things, the Penn Central and GG1 era, some of the last pre-Amtrak passenger trains, railfan trips when you could still pull together stuff like the AFT and Chessie Steam Special, etc.

And he shot it all on low-quality, grainy film, in some cases obviously Instamatic, and did drugstore processing.
What negatives we have found have faded considerably. The prints are all on that grainy canvas-like matte paper. We're reduced to scanning grainy prints of grainy--a far cry from sharp slides.

And a boxload of prints or slides is just as vulnerable to heat, a water leak in the roof, fire, etc. as a computer hard drive is to a critical error.

I recently had a fellow archivist have his computer crash along with all his data, including the external hard drive with about 400,000 scanned slides and photos. Thankfully for him, I had insisted on him sending me USB drives with his work regularly (about every six months or so). I had a complete backup of his work. I sent him a 4TB drive with everything he had sent to me, along with a whole bunch of other data he and the library he works with could use, ordered him to keep backing up religiously, and keep "cloning" additional copies of that archive to scatter in several locations besides my place.

Try that with prints. The organized holdings of said photos would take up three rooms, if all gathered in one spot.

And the reality is that if you truly want or need what's on an "obsolete" form of data storage, IT CAN BE RECOVERED if someone truly wants it badly enough and no one undertook the trouble to destroy the hard drive in several ways like a certain former Secretary of State did with her server. But the reality is that no one REALLY needs Sheldon Cooper's school papers from 1986 on a 5 1/4" floppy disc. Meanwhile, I have repaired 16mm film projectors and a WIRE audio recorder in order for archives to be able to "recover" old movies and audio recordings of steam locomotives. And I've recovered (with the help of both amazing data recovery software and associates) data from old floppies and transferred the data to more modern formats.

Both analogue and digital have their pluses and minuses. But the big plus of digital is that by eliminating film and processing costs and the attendant problems of physics involved, the production of photography has increased a thousand-fold. The big problem is finding and editing what's truly representative and worthy of preserving among all the dregs and wanton excess.

My film originals look a whole lot better than much newer electronic images do after several file transfers and format changes. You guys have at it, but I'm sticking with film for my serious work. If anybody wants to scan it, or they want to cover my project using their digi-whatchamacawlits, they're more than welcome, and I wish them luck.

The REAL problem I've had with these super size digital archives is getting them to share anything with me. But I don't want to apply the tar and feathers with too wide a brush. A very few folks HAVE been helpful.

Another reason old men (even some young ones) don't like digital is that you have to hook it up to a computer to get the thing to do much of anything. And, what could possibly go wrong with that arrangement ???

Agreed with ADM.

While I like the archival qualities of Slides and Negatives, they have more then their share of downfalls. Thankfully the local college surplus store had a massive amount of (100+) 5 drawer archival slide storage cabinets for 10$ a pop last year.. I was able to stock up for myself, and several local railfans.

I have been digitizing two collections, and the slide quality is all over the map. Slides do not hold a candle to a modern, quality digital camera. Especially slides from about 1990 on, which are just always grainy.

Negatives? A large format negative I would put about on par, but 35mm negatives, especially when they were not stored right, are mostly trash. I have been going back and forth on a photo for my tug book about which scan to use, the print, or the negative, because they both suck about equally, but its too important of a subject to skip.

I have all my work backed up in several spots, as well as paying for a cloud based archival service.

Both film and prints deteriorate over time. It’s unavoidable. How long it takes depends on how well they’re cared for. With proper backups, digital is forever. There are standard compressed and uncompressed image formats depending on what you want or need to do with the images. The formats aren’t likely to go away any time soon. I was an early adopter of digital imaging since it is so much more flexible. Never looked back.

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You guys are entitled to your opinions, but I spoke from experience. User error ??? Sure, my error was switching to digital, and covering historic subjects with videotape. Anyhow, I explained why old men shoot slides, and I have had excellent, reasonably priced service from slide sellers (can't say that for ANY computer company, ISP, software outfit, giant non-profit, or company making digital gadgets).

I conceded that digital has it's place, and I only have this to add: For several years I've been looking for a Pentax MG body, and a Pentax single action, K mount, 35 to 135 zoom lens. I'm only interested in nice examples, lightly used and fully functional. If any of you fellas has something like that which you can live without, please contact me off list --- I'll be glad to pay top dollar for the genuine article. Thanks to all...

Ironically, this is absolutely NO different from someone typing:
"I need a Windows 3.1 PC computer with a 5 1/4" floppy drive with Wordstar installed and a serial port able to hook up a functional Iomega Zip Drive for dual-sided 100MB discs.... and does anyone have a Compact Flash card reader?....."

Mr Mitchel, I don't even know what your last post meant, but I can assure you that there is quite a bit of camera trading going on among us old timers. The equipment I want hasn't changed for 30 or 40 years, these are mass produced standard items, lovingly cared for by those fortunate enough to own them, and usually only available if somebody dies, or sometimes maybe if they switch to digital. In the last week I have indeed gotten some cherry Pentax gear from a pro who thought my views made sense, and it is entirely reasonable for me to inquire about this kind of gear on this forum.

For my part, this subject has been covered adequately. As I said to you recently on another thread, please Sir, "NUFF SAID".

I'm sorry to see that you can't understand a simple analogy.

Both the camera gear you asked for and the computer gear I described would be perfectly functional, and do exactly what the user desired of them if used as designed, assuming nothing was wrong with them.

Both are also completely obsolete, in terms of modern-day consumer and business demand, and have been supplanted by better options in terms of modern demand.

In July 2001 I was calling Kalmbach and Carstens from a pay phone at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium to alert them to a breaking news story--the Howard Street Tunnel fire--and tell them to make room for the slides that were to follow, while meanwhile calling my wife and directing her to snag whatever slide film she could for the next couple days of my coverage.

Now you can't find a pay phone. Or slide film. All the shops we raided in 2001 are gone, from Cooper's Camera Mart to KMart. It took a week to get the photos processed, even hand carrying them to an on-site lab near DC.

In April 2018 I filed a story with Trains, complete with digital photos from the scene, of the old Santa Fe Albuquerque (N.M.) Shops catching fire literally as I was driving through town. Basically, only the time zone difference and the lateness of the fire kept it from running the same day. Now I could do it all from my "smartphone" at the scene.

In 1991 I spent approximately $750 (just shy of $1,500 today) on film and processing for three weeks in Britain--about 2500 photos. Thirty years later on digital, I could shoot ten times as many max-resolution shots for less than $50, AND back it all up nightly as I go so nothing gets lost in shipment.

And now railfans can self-publish their work on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Railpictures, RRPictureArchives, etc. without needing an editor's approval.

All this stuff allows the "common man" to enjoy this hobby. And if we want this hobby and others to survive, we need that "democratization" more than we need to argue over Nikon vs. Canon vs. Leica, buy radio scanners, etc.

"Why, when I was your age, all we had were Rand McNally Atlases--highway AND railroad!"

[quote="Alexander D. Mitchell IV"]

Now you can't find a pay phone. Or slide film. All the shops we raided in 2001 are gone, from Cooper's Camera Mart to KMart....

Most Kmarts are gone, but please look at

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?N ... yes&sts=ma

or try Amazon.



Bob H

Even Amazon Prime would be useless when you need the additional slide film THE NEXT MORNING AT SUNRISE. And it "needs" to be transparency film for the printer. (As I recall, I had two rolls of Fujichrome 100 in the refrigerator which got pressed into service that evening while I could still get past certain fire/police lines. The wife's resupply run turned out to be critical.)

And, come to think of it, I could shoot digital in dim light LONG after Kodachrome would be rendered useless.......

Meanwhile, I can now find SD cards at every place from WalMart to Family Dollar to drugstore chains to supermarkets--just like I could print film in 2001. For about 50 cents a gigabyte. But, of course, no WGRF would dare deign to shoot print film or digital if they had to........ not even for the last Baldwin Centipede perfectly posed on a turntable.........

Mr Mitchel, I'm sorry you can't take an obvious hint. You can do what you want, but leave me alone. What I said, and what you said, are in no way the same thing.

Hume Kading was a good friend of mine, and he set up this site so we could discuss TRAINS. He displayed amazing foresight in the way it was structured, and many, many good folks have benefited from his contribution. Now, I realize that discussing computers is relevant for many folks, either for railroad jobs or railroad hobbies. I've expressed my opinion, they have expressed theirs. They don't seem to feel the need to bother me, and I don't need to bother them about it. Instead, I have a life, and I suspect they might also.

However, this site was not set up so adults could squabble like three years olds, and I know for a fact that is why our founder has not been seen for years. Our members don't need to waste time on your and my differing opinions, Sir. In plain English, Mr. Mitchel, I'm not going to get drawn into an online pissing contest with you, so I'm happy for you to have the last word. But, if "NUFF SAID" doesn't work for you in my case, how about we continue this in private ?? I'll be on the east coast for a week next month. I'd be happy to meet you man to man.

Now, can we talk about trains, or at least "Worlds Greatest Railfans" ?? And, everybody in RyPN land, including Mr Mitchel, have a nice day.

Fellas, if you're near a big city, just go to a pro camera shop. Anyplace that is big enough to have pro photographers has someplace where they trade. I'm not a pro, but that's no problem, they'll fix me up with film and processing as long as my money is green.

And, I shoot color prints, but I'm not a WGRF, just a retired railroader that likes to take train pictures.