[PRCo] Re: Keystone State Traction

[Fred Schneider]

People tended to use the cameras with which their friends had success.   That is why the 116 and 616 size cameras became so universal in the hobby.  However, Bob Lewis, his brother Hans, and Bill Watts, and Al Pitman (who built DC motors for models) all grew up in Chestnut Hill.   I think both Watts and Bob Lewis were using 127 folding autographic Kodak cameras in their early years and they neither had abundantly sharp lenses nor were the films of that era capable of great enlargements.

I owned all of the Watts negatives until I transferred title to the PTM library.   I enlarged a lot of them to 8x10.   The grain is so large it reminds one of the bottom of a gravel pit.   In contrast to that, a Plus X negative exposed with a Mamiya 645 (I'm thinking of all the stuff I processed over the years for Bill Middleton) would blow up to 40x48 and still not have that much grain, yet the negative would be the same size.   The quality of film emulsions was very greatly improved by the 1980s and later.   Sadly we had to replace it with digital technology which I remain unconvinced will be as good.   

On May 5, 2010, at 6:06 PM, John Swindler wrote:

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> Many of the photos were not taken by Bob Lewis.  And many of the photos are not the Keystone State.  
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> That said, I really would have liked to have seen what Bob Lewis was able to capture with his camera in the Keystone State.  He seemed to have a sharper lens than Bill Watts.
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> I don't have the depth of knowledge of Ed or Fred - or many others.  So when I start finding errors, it has got to be bad.
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> But Ed was right:  Bob Lewis deserved better.
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> Cheers
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> John
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>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Keystone State Traction
>> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
>> Date: Wed, 5 May 2010 10:12:26 -0400
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>> 
>> Reviews? More errors than you could possibly dream of packing in one book but Bob managed. It belongs on the fiction shelf. 
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>> On May 5, 2010, at 7:33 AM, Dennis F Cramer wrote:
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>>> Does anyone have reviews for the rest of us of Keystone State Traction published by CERA?
>>> http://www.cera-chicago.org/books/book_catalog.htm
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> DF Cramer
>>> 
>>> 
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