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You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – Los Angeles train yard

On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – Los Angeles train yard

by WaterGirl|  July 16, 20205:00 am| 31 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

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My uncle worked for the railroad, as did my cousins, and I always thought that if I had been born much earlier, I might have been drawn to that, too.  These are in black & white, or maybe I should say brown because these seem to be another technique.  Haunting.  ~WaterGirl

This set of shots are from the train yards south east of downtown Los Angeles (with one exception). Like the pictures of the harbor, trains and tracks offer geometry, texture, and atmosphere. These, too, were taken during my period at Art Center from 1969-1972.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - Los Angeles train yard 5
Comptche

I’ve colored this first picture fairly heavily to give it an antique feel emphasizing the old wooden utility building and bench. The bridge in the background connects downtown L.A. with Glendale (more or less). Billin can undoubtedly provide a better description. It’s been decades since I’ve been over that way, with lots of excitement in the interim (and an increasingly fuzzy memory).

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - Los Angeles train yard 4

Love this picture, despite its technical problems. Pump marks in the 35 mm negative plus artifacts from my early work in Photoshop (incompetent use of sharpening, which I didn’t understand in the beginning). I threw a Photoshop “filter” at it to emphasize the graphic qualities. It might make sense to re-edit the scan and see what more I can coax from the negative, but I’ve just got too many photos, not enough time, and I’m no longer trying to leave a photo legacy for the ages. Just here to have fun these days.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - Los Angeles train yard 3

I really wanted to be Brett Weston. That artistic obsession contributed to my essentially ceasing photography for a forty-year period. I still love his work and have several original prints of his hanging in my office. This is a classic Weston approach to subject matter and composition.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - Los Angeles train yard 2

Another Brett Weston clone. I have a fair number of similar pictures.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - Los Angeles train yard 1

I’m not sure if natural gas tanks like the one in the background here are still in use, but I found them fascinating as a kid.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - Los Angeles train yard

This picture is a thematic anomaly in that it is neither a train nor is it taken in the train yards. It is, in fact, the Angel’s Flight cable car in downtown Los Angeles. I took this in 1969 a few months before it was closed for refurbishing.

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Reader Interactions

31Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 16, 2020 at 5:04 am

    I also come from a line of railroad/railway workers, so these photos really resonated with me.

    Big fan of b/w and monochromatic photography. These are splendid.

  2. 2.

    Sab

    July 16, 2020 at 5:26 am

    These are wonderful. Also too everything SiubhanDuinne said except my people weren’t railway.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 16, 2020 at 5:30 am

    I’m not sure if natural gas tanks like the one in the background here are still in use,

    They are in STL. Nice pics, I like the Brett Weston esques.

  4. 4.

    MazeDancer

    July 16, 2020 at 5:34 am

    Beautifully composed, evocative photos.

  5. 5.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 16, 2020 at 5:37 am

    Good photograph of the late 6th Street Bridge in the second shot.  It was torn down a couple of years ago and it’s replacement is being built(scheduled for opening in 2022).

    I took Angels Flight about the time you took that picture, just before they closed it.  It was a bit more than refurbishment, they moved it a half block south and it was closed for 27 years*, reopening in 1996.

    *It was supposed to closed for 2 years, sort of like the “temporary” parking structure at 1st and Grand which lasted for 50 years.

  6. 6.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 16, 2020 at 5:45 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: They were called “gasometers” in LA and there were all over the city.  There were 3 just east of LA City Hall, I remember seeing them on the freeway when were headed south of LA along with “Brew 102”.  The last one in Southern CA was in Signal Hill south of LA, it was torn down in the mid-90’s

  7. 7.

    raven

    July 16, 2020 at 6:04 am

    After a supersonic flight a U.S. Air Force F-86 Sabre jet crashes into a neighborhood during landing approach after a supersonic training flight in California. It kills seven people as it smashes into a residential area. It sprays flaming fuel oil and completely destroys two houses. The demolished houses are seen. Army Personnel check the wreckage. Toys of children found in the wreckage. Signal Hill Oil Field seen. Several people take their belongings.

  8. 8.

    raven

    July 16, 2020 at 6:15 am

    Season 4 of Bosch is “Angels Flight”  and centers on a murder committed there.

  9. 9.

    rikyrah

    July 16, 2020 at 7:01 am

    Hauntingly beautiful?

  10. 10.

    CCL

    July 16, 2020 at 7:06 am

    Beautiful.

  11. 11.

    debbie

    July 16, 2020 at 7:22 am

    My photography instructors from art school would love these!

  12. 12.

    Mary G

    July 16, 2020 at 7:24 am

    Before I got a car I took Amtrak from college in LA to visit my mom in the OC, because the Greyhound bus was a nightmare. I rode through those yards many times, and you’ve made them look much better than my memories of them.

  13. 13.

    stinger

    July 16, 2020 at 8:12 am

    I don’t know anything about photography, but I know what I like. And I like these!

  14. 14.

    MelissaM

    July 16, 2020 at 8:35 am

    Any HBO Perry Mason fans? Angel’s Flight features in a murder there.

    I love that braid of rope or cables or whatever going away from the lens.

  15. 15.

    Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)

    July 16, 2020 at 8:51 am

    These are gorgeous.

    In the early 80s my school bus passed a natural gas tank.  They dismantled it while I was still attending that school, so I’d see it coming down more and more every morning.  Weirdly fascinating to this 12 year old to see the giant structure shrinking by the day.

  16. 16.

    arrieve

    July 16, 2020 at 9:30 am

    Wonderful pictures.

  17. 17.

    crm114

    July 16, 2020 at 9:43 am

    These are all taken a few blocks from my house. The first is on the west bank of the LA river looking northeast at the third street bridge, most of the rail lines in the foreground were freight sidings and have been torn up and replaced by streets (Santa Fe and Mateo street). There are still permanent ways along the river, though I don’t think you can see those here. The shed in the foreground is of course long gone and depending on where you spot it it’s probably in the parking lot of Bavel, a very chic mediterranean restaurant in the LA Arts District.

     

    The second photo looks like it’s on the east bank of the LA River looking north at the 6th Street Bridge. The bridge was legendary, having appeared in hundreds of films, TV and commercials: it was demolished several years ago because substandard concrete had made it unsafe and it’s replacement is presently under construction. The tracks are freight lines that lead directly to a huge  marshaling yard north of downtown that is still in use but is slated to be demolished and replaced with the 2028 LA Olympic Village.

  18. 18.

    namekarB

    July 16, 2020 at 9:47 am

    As a retired Southern Pacific freight conductor, I approve this post. Read my handle backwards.

  19. 19.

    crm114

    July 16, 2020 at 9:57 am

    Actually I take it back, the first photo is probably taken from the east bank north of the bridge… that view is no longer possible because of buildings but the bridge and tracks are all still there!

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    July 16, 2020 at 11:10 am

    @namekarB: I always wondered about the B!  :-)

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    July 16, 2020 at 11:11 am

    @crm114: It’s so interesting to see how our paths cross over time, even on Balloon Juice.

  22. 22.

    JustRuss

    July 16, 2020 at 11:23 am

    Great pics.  Despite growing up on SoCal and living in LA for a few years, I was not aware of Angels Flight, probably because it wasn’t running during most of the time I was there.  Interesting story about the fatal accident it suffered in 2001, Exhibit # 4793 as to why we can’t have Nice Things.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_Flight#2001_accident

  23. 23.

    Origuy

    July 16, 2020 at 12:59 pm

    I searched to see if there were any gasometers left in California. Apparently, nearly all in the US have been torn down. The last one in use was in Indianapolis. There’s one in New Hampshire that still has the cap in place; there is an attempt to save it as a historical landmark.

    I did find an article from 1900 where one in San Francisco was hit by lightning. That must have been a sight.

    When I get a chance to go to LA, I want to ride Angel’s Flight. It’s been closed every time I’ve been near.

  24. 24.

    namekarB

    July 16, 2020 at 1:03 pm

    Here is another place to view monochrome photos of old trains and a bunch of others subjects in their archive

    https://www.junipergallery.com/historical_railroad_photos

  25. 25.

    Ruckus

    July 16, 2020 at 1:25 pm

    @Mary G:

    I worked/owned a business-33 yrs real near to there, and I’d agree, such a lovely part of town. And just in case anyone is wondering, yes, I’m being just a touch sarcastic.

  26. 26.

    Steve from Mendocino

    July 16, 2020 at 2:10 pm

    @namekarB: Thanks for that link.  Really nice pictures.

    It’s interesting to see that most of them have the verticals straightened.  It used to be that if you were going to take serious pictures of architecture, you used a view camera and made the verticals parallel with the edges of the frame before tripping the shutter.  With Photoshop, you don’t even need to straighten them in the camera, but nobody seems to focus on this any longer.  For me, having verticals converge in your pictures is like singing off key.  But then again, I used to walk five miles to school in the snow uphill both ways.  I just don’t understand why things aren’t like they were in the good old days.

  27. 27.

    J R in WV

    July 16, 2020 at 3:01 pm

    My great uncle Herb was a conductor on the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) RR, and as part of his pension had a lifetime passenger pass… which didn’t last much longer than Uncle Herb did. When he visited his sister, my grandma, he tried to teach me Morse code, which went as well as you would think with a 6 y o kid.

    My whole family (aunts, mom, grandma, cousins for the history of it all) took the steam passenger train one day just before they were done away with in the coal fields. My little brother was a babe in arms, so I was 5 or six. The cars were all iron and wood, even the benches, the windows were down because it was summer time, and in the (very many) tunnels on the trip from Eccles to Mullens it was pitch black, and very smokey and cindery from the coal fired steam locomotive.

    Until the mid-50s trains were how you got around in WV. Roads sucked, so did the cars. It took 3 days to drive to PA and you stayed nights in homes with spare rooms for “tourists”.  Now the Cannonball time from NYC to LA takes just over 25 hours or so…

    Love these photos. Thanks!!

  28. 28.

    Ruckus

    July 16, 2020 at 4:35 pm

    @Steve from Mendocino:

    Things are of course never like they weren’t in the old days.

    Even when you wanted them to be.

  29. 29.

    Jay Noble

    July 16, 2020 at 7:56 pm

    @Steve from Mendocino: I’m going to have to renew my search for a “View camera”. I’ve seen tons of stuff on how to undo that vanishing point thing in Photoshop but my though is if you can get it in the picture, why go to all that bother. The ultimate goal for me is to create “pen and ink” drawings of our historic downtown and make vanvas prints and postcards.

  30. 30.

    AJ

    July 16, 2020 at 9:45 pm

    These are beautiful, thanks for sharing! Love to see more if you have more

  31. 31.

    M. Bouffant

    July 17, 2020 at 12:31 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: When I first came to L.A. as an “adult” I was visiting friends; when we first drove by the Brew 102 sign, they all warned me it was terrible swill to be avoided at all costs.

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