I buy slides and negatives on occasion. Mostly I am looking for places I have been, or locomotives that interest me – GMD1s, RS18s or VIA F units, for example. I recently acquired a slide of a westbound CN train at Lac Baker, New Brunswick dated September 30, 2000.
I was interested in that one because I was in Lac Baker at the end of May 2009. The slide shows pretty much the same shot that I took in 2009. It’s the obvious photo from that location; many people have taken the same photo.
In filing that slide in my collection, I discovered that I had purchased another slide from that location, from 1990, taken by Al Chione. Let’s look at that one first.
Al had some nice side light on this train, led by two “cowl” locomotives, CN 2414 and 2408. You can see the Lac Baker arena in the background.
Same location, same arena, 10 years later with different locomotives. This had CN 5611 and CN 2533.
Now here’s my shot.
Same location, same arena, 9 more years later with different locomotives. CN 2705, CN 2225, CN 8838 and CN 2549 leading train CN 121.
Three photos spanning nineteen years. Love it.
Other Photos From Here
I did a very quick search on Flickr and found a few different photographers that I follow who took basically the same shot: Don Marson in 2005 and Travis Bragg in 2019. The above is Matt Landry’s photo, used with permission.
The other “standard shot” in Lac Baker features the “blue church” and is good for eastbound trains. Here’s mine from May 31, 2009 with a very colourful consist on CN 308.
If you want to read about the May 2009 adventures, maybe start here in Campbellton and follow David Morris and I as we drove west into Quebec and back.