Trains at Night

Trains at Night William C Gill's project to photograph trains at night. Troy New York
I illuminate and photograph the railroad landscape at night.

Starting from dark is an opportunity to selectively include elements that tell the story of how a space is and was used.

A CSX intermodal train heads north over the Catskill Creek Bridge - right at the edge of the village there is a mix of o...
04/22/2026

A CSX intermodal train heads north over the Catskill Creek Bridge - right at the edge of the village there is a mix of old buildings and modern street scape.

Built as a scythe factory, this site in West Warren, Mass was converted to cotton production in the 1850s. It grew under...
03/05/2026

Built as a scythe factory, this site in West Warren, Mass was converted to cotton production in the 1850s. It grew under the names Warren Cotton Mills, Thorndike Cotton Mills and West Warren Industries. In the 1934s it became Wm Wright & Sons. During WWII they produced parachutes and wool blankets. It remained open until the early 2000s, producing a variety of textiles and trimmings. 600,000 square feet now sit empty. Maybe a bit is used a dorm for long haul truckers. Just downstream are a few blocks of factory workers houses. Behind me are a few downtown buildings, traffic got pretty quiet as it got dark. I paced around on the bridge over the Quaboag River. A woman walked over the bridge and inspected the lights. Last night, she traded calls with her son as trains came through from Palmer, one one way, and then another coming the other on this stretch of single track. She used to work in the mills and asked why I wanted to photograph them. "The train, the river, the dam, the mills, they all go together. The mills look amazing."

"Sometimes" she said.

Zero degrees Fahrenheit and an hour late, Amtrak's Adirondack whips up a mini snow storm outside Hudson, NY. The moon wa...
01/30/2026

Zero degrees Fahrenheit and an hour late, Amtrak's Adirondack whips up a mini snow storm outside Hudson, NY. The moon was out, nearly full, it was almost painfully bright, almost daylight in the snow. The river was completely frozen, making groans and occasional shattering noises and the sound of blood pumping in your ears. As I waited for my train, the bandana covering my face froze but it still kept gusts off my face. I heard several freight trains on the other side of the river. Rather suddenly (I thought I heard an approaching train) an icebreaker appeared with bright lights shining in every direction. Two tugs followed in the clear spot behind it, ice chunks making hollow banging against their hulls. Someone started a rumor that the river and the railroads are dead if not dying but they probably haven't stood outside on a cold night watching them all pass by.

01/21/2026

Author Ken Karlewicz has helped out getting some amazing night photos on the Batten Kill Railroad - one of the northeast's more interesting shortlines featuring 70 year old, locally built Alco locomotives. So happy to have a couple images in the book he's built.
Check it out: Batten Kill Book

Taking another look at this image from 2014 of the Windsor-Cornish covered bridge and a New England Central train.Fresh ...
01/20/2026

Taking another look at this image from 2014 of the Windsor-Cornish covered bridge and a New England Central train.

Fresh off a failure to photograph a train passing a covered bridge on the Green Mountain Railroad - broadside, covered bridges look a lot like a barn - I hurried to the Vermont / New Hampshire border to photograph the end of this covered bridge.

Ron Olsen lent me some x3200s from Paul Buff. They could better reach the 700' from a sandbar to the railroad bridges and he needed my smaller lights for a shoot in China.

I had one Pocketwizard MultiMAX that could be used as a repeater. It was over 2000' from the camera to the lights. I had not yet worked out how to make the radios work well over water and I nearly left in anger.

It was April and the Connecticut River was also angry. I think the idea was to shoot before the foliage appeared but the river shouldn't have been a surprise.

I caught some serious glare on the side of the locomotive and hated the result. Now I measure for that kind of problem ahead of time.

Figured I'd try running it through a new version of photoshop to address the glare a bit. Took out a no parking sign that was in the middle of the frame.

Now, I guess this photo is pretty ok.

Stephannie and I passed through here in the canoe in 2022. In the summer, you could stand in the river. In the summer, I could put lights wherever I wanted.

I recently shared a recent night image of the Susquehanna passing over Starrucca Viaduct. Howard Pincus shared this imag...
12/13/2025

I recently shared a recent night image of the Susquehanna passing over Starrucca Viaduct. Howard Pincus shared this image looking in the opposite direction at the same location 40 years earlier for “Rails After Dark” with Robert Hart and Hal Reiser. Using the same 4x5 cameras/film and flash bulbs as O.W.Link [O. Winston Link Museum], they set out to capture images of railroad at night.

The viaduct is instantly recognizable. Both images are taken in the snow and the NYSW has retained the snappy black and yellow paint scheme on their locomotives. Today, the D&H railroad line passing under is a rail trail. The trees have grown in significantly. Instead of two tracks, the viaduct now has one...much further from the edge, the lower part of the locomotives is clipped off in my image.

They had to pull wire to each flash bulb - which had to be replaced manually between shots. They photographed in both color and B&W film and couldn't 'guess and check' like we do on digital. Film, and particularly large format film, requires a good bit more light than modern digital. A serious effort.

Built for the Erie RR in 1848s, the Starrucca Viaduct remains in use and keeps inspiring visitors.

Some of Starrucca ViaductI think this doesn't quite capture the scale of this enormous stone structure, the collection o...
12/12/2025

Some of Starrucca Viaduct

I think this doesn't quite capture the scale of this enormous stone structure, the collection of houses under it, how the sounds echo off it as the train loops around and works up grade.

I have a small edition of 16x20" prints of Hickory Creek at Bear Mountain Creek. Its been a while since I've had anythin...
12/01/2025

I have a small edition of 16x20" prints of Hickory Creek at Bear Mountain Creek. Its been a while since I've had anything for sale and figured I might as well go with the most New York scene I've got! DM for info. ..So far the best part of this is that the first print went to the engineer!

I wonder what this looked like before the river had so many dams. I wonder how much paper is still produced in this vall...
11/25/2025

I wonder what this looked like before the river had so many dams. I wonder how much paper is still produced in this valley. I wonder how many of these surrounding houses are summer homes.

I'm doing an edition of 12 16x20" prints of the Hickory Creek, a preserved observation car from the 20th Century Limited...
11/24/2025

I'm doing an edition of 12 16x20" prints of the Hickory Creek, a preserved observation car from the 20th Century Limited, passing under the Bear Mountain Bridge. $250 shipped. DM for info.

Address

Catskill, NY

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Trains at Night posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Trains at Night:

Shortcuts

Share

Category