[PRCo] Re: 3-car fantrip from Pittsburgh to PRMA Washington

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Suspect you are high on that number.  Thirty or forty fans might have
made 100 to 125 exposures. On many of those trips fewer than half the
fans took pictures while the rest just went to ride, smell, listen, and
convince others to drink Doctor Pepper.

Films have dropped in price over the last century with respect to
general inflationary trends for other products.  Taking pictures was a
luxury for the early railfans.  Kodachrome for example held roughly the
same price per roll from 1938 into the 1970s or 1980s, while the dollar
was inflated and made purchasing film much easier.  If you can find any
railfans out there who took Kodachrome when it first came on the market,
they will tell you how they rationed it.  Jim Shuman took his first roll
of Kodachrome on an Indiana Railroad fantrip in 1940 ... a 8 exposure
roll of 828 film in a camera he borrowed from John Seibert ... he took
several rolls of black and white 616 that same weekend.  Frank Goldsmith
used to talk about how these youngsters don't understand what we went
through.  He would talk about stretching a 36 exposure roll over weeks
because you couldn't afford not to.  My dad bought a 35mm Baldina in the
late 1930s ... he rammed a good deal of black and white through it but I
doubt very much if more than seven or eight rolls of Kodachrome went
through it from 1939 to 1950.  (Part of that was because films were
generally not available to the public during World War II.) Near the end
of his life, Dad pushed close to 3,000 rolls of film through his
Hassalblad and 2/3s of that was Kodacolor, Vericolor or Ektachrome.  

I'm sitting here looking up at 26 steel drawers filled with negatives
and thinking that everything Ralph Perkin took on the Ohio interurbans
filled less than one shoebox ... some very good stuff in that shoe box,
however.  

John Swindler wrote:
> 
> >Bob Rathke commented:
> >
> >
> >Jim,
> >
> >The photo was FROM Bill Gwinn; he didn't take the photo, but it was in his
> >collection. This photo was taken of the same scene, and at the same
> >location, as the photo you posted; in fact, the pole shadows fall on
> >exactly the same locations on the PCC in both photos.  The 832 in my photo
> >is above the front of the PCC, while on your photo it's above the middle of
> >the PCC.
> >They could have been sequence photos taken by the one person, or photos
> >taken by two people standing very close together.  We'll probably never
> >know.
> >
> 
> How about a photo line of railfans???  And these just happen to be two of
> possible couple dozen negatives/slides of this scene.  After all, it was a
> fantrip.
> 
> Instead, how about something else to ponder:  So where are the other 500
> slides/negatives taken on this fantrip??  (just as a guesstimate: 30-40
> railfans expose 1-2 rolls of film each)  Suspect the photographic record of
> our hobby is like an iceberg:  We've only seen the top 10% so far.
> 
> John
> 
> > > You may have a copy of a  *similar*  photo, but not this particular
> > > one.(:->)   This is  NOT  a Bill Gwinn photo.
> >
> >I double-checked my NMRA flyer, and yes, 4398 was used in the parade of
> >trolleys night fantrip in August, 1958.
> >
> > >... 4398 was purchased by PERC or PRMA later - 1956.04.05.   Don't
> > > have the actual date of the move to Arden  --  think it was several
> > > years later.  Didn't you detail that 4398 was used on the NMRA charter
> >in
> >1956 or
> > > thereabouts??
> >
> >Bob 10/17/01
> >
> >
> 
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