(erielack) Presidents message - FEC Chapter/NRHS

["Walter Smith" <wsmith5957_@_hotmail.com>]

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

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