Seashore Trolley Museum at Night

A complete set of photos of this trip can be found here.

Seashore Trolley Museum; Kennebunkport, Maine; November 2, 2013

Last year I had seen some photos taken by Joey Kelly of a night photo session at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine. I contacted Joey and said if the event was repeated, please let me know. He immediately responded that it would indeed be held again, this time on November 2, 2013. I circled the date on the calendar, and made my way up the Maine coast once the date arrived.

Amtrak; Hartford, Conn.

Timing conspired to force me into making the trip in a quick weekend up and back, so I plotted a route to Maine that would let me pick off a couple of Amtrak shots that I had wanted to do. There is a shot in Hartford, Conn., from the station platform that features the Nutmeg State's capitol building in the background. Unfortunately, the shot is looking straight south, making lighting tricky. I had done the shot with the mid-morning train a few weeks earlier with okay results; this trip would take me through Hartford at lunch time and I could try the midday train. This, as it turns out, did not work out well; the light was extremely harsh and Amtrak was running the shuttle trains between New Haven and Springfield with the cab cars on the north end (the first time I had seen that). Oh, well. . .

Up next was a shot I had scoped out on a rail photography site of the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited in Worcester, Mass. The shot featured a nice backdrop of old mill buildings. I easily found the location, but in the four years between when the shot was taken and this day, the middle mill building had been demolished, leaving a large gap in the facade. A splash of fall foliage made the shot worth doing, anyhow.

Amtrak; Worcester, Mass.; November 2, 2013

Seashore Trolley Museum; Kennebunkport, Maine

Arriving in Kennebunkport, I did a few quick daytime shots, then met up with Joey, who was the coordinator for the event. I also met Shawn Duren, who would be doing the lighting. A second flash guy couldn't make it, so I dusted off my 20-year-old Lumedyne flash (which I haven't used in a couple of years; it has been supplanted by my collection of Alien Bees strobes) and joined Shawn in lighting the scenes. If the event had a downside, it was that is was too popular -- 34 photographers showed up, when the expectation was for a dozen at most. This made some of the scenes a touch crowded. Rain that had been predicted for after midnight arrived early, and a one hour rain delay after the first few shots thinned the crowd out.

Seashore Trolley Museum; Kennebunkport, Maine; November 2, 2013

The first setup was at north end of the museum's trackage, where three complete sets of subway cars (two from New York and one from Boston) were posed (above). Not many museums can field a full set of subway cars, never mind three sets. It was quite impressive, and a bear to light. From there the session moved down to Tower C near the museum's visitor center where the Boston Blue Line subway set was posed (top of this page), followed by a variety of streetcars including the museum's first car and a pair of Connecticut Company cars. The evening finished with a couple of electric freight motors.

Seashore Trolley Museum; Kennebunkport, Maine

Once all the shots were done, the session came to an end around 10:30 p.m. I had initially planned to stay in the Boston area overnight; in fact, my collection is very thin on MBTA photography and I had carefully plotted out a seven-shot itinerary for Sunday that would let me fill in a lot of gaps. Unfortunately, Sunday's weather forecast was not good. Not wanting to spend money for a motel just to get up and drive straight home the next day, I decided to just do the five and a half hour drive back to New Jersey right after the night session broke up. By 11:00 I was on the road and rolled into my driveway at 4:30 a.m. On the way home, my mind kept plotting shots that needed to be done next year at Kennebunkport. And that Boston trip is still near the top of the list for a day of shooting, hopefully soon.