Thursday, December 09, 2010

Backgrounds

I received my scans back from ScanCafe yesterday, so expect a batch of old photos to start appearing here soon.

I am starting to rename the files with meaningful names, and I noticed something interesting in the background of this otherwise normal slide of CN 2531 in Moncton (by Greg Brewer).
CN 2531 in Moncton. Slide by Greg Brewer
Notice the passenger cars in the background? Here's the relevant part of the slide:

The scan didn't quite work out for this slide. The cars really don't have a big bend in them!

I thought, "yellow cars, yellow cars, I've seen those before."

Then I remembered - a couple of the Salem & Hillsborough passenger cars were painted yellow when they were received. Here's a bad scan of an Al Howland picture:

This makes a lot of sense, because Greg's slide was shot on June 17, 1984, just prior to the start up of operations for the Salem & Hillsborough Railway.

Moral: Keep an eye on the backgrounds!

2 comments:

jddc.trains said...

Just out of curiosity...overall are you please with the results of the scans you received?

Cheers,

Jason

Canadian Train Geek said...

Overall I have been quite pleased with the results. The scans are sharp and bright. In general they have rendered the slides accurately.

I would recommend ScanCafe to people who have a lot of slides or photographs to scan. The price is quite reasonable for a bulk scan. It does take some time for the scans to be done and returned, and the shipping cost is high enough that you wouldn't want to use them for small orders.

As a disclaimer, I do get a commission when you place an order through the links on my site, but I wouldn't recommend them unless I think they do a good job.