
"The Tehachapi Loop At Night, California" (c) 2011 Stu Jenks
This negative was exposed for around three hours on a moonless night, using my old Rollei, loaded with Efke Infrared film. The infrared was just what I had in the camera at the time, but it may have made the hills in the distance glow more than they would have, if I had been shooting with my usual Ilford Delta film. The f-stop was 5.6, if you care.
I was parked, that night, atop a hill overlooking this wonderful engineering feat in the southern Sierra Nevadas. I slept during most of the exposure, awakened on occasion to the grinding of steel on steel or to the high squeeks of wheel bearings or to the low rumble of a many-tonned locomotive passing by below me. I smiled each time I awoke.
My guess is you are seeing the lights of around a dozen trains in this photograph, maybe more. And as I've said before on the StuBlog, if you are ever on California 58 east of Bakersfield, you need to stop and experience The T-Loop.
Lastly, the sepia tone was added in Photoshop, the negative was scanned at Photographic Works in Tucson, and the map below was lifted from trainweb.org.
