Location of this LV line?

ctclark and ScottyChaos have it right. Pic looks to have been taken from Broad Street (probably from under the bridge) with a very long lens. Have taken a few pics with up to 2000mm lenses and confused even myself sometimes with the distortion of curves and tight lengths - counting joints in the tangent confirms it, about a quarter mile from phone to MP and another quarter mile to Chemung St. For the curve distortion, at Chemung St. the half mile long curve does achieve an angle of about 11.5 degrees from the tangent, so it would appear pretty sharp with the long lens.

The phone box is about 272.75 - That is MP 273 in the pic, across from the current ball-field property on Ithaca St. This phone location would not have shown in the '47 TT as it would have been installed with the interlocking during single tracking project in '65 (probably moved from 273.3, which would otherwise be visible under the bridge in the OP pic). The phone at 274.6 was at what would become BLS SAL under Conrail. The phone at 272.3 was AN (probably replaced the tower when control was centralized at Sayre). The OP pic signal head was the EB interlocking signal protecting the crossovers to old WB main and leader after the single tracking (hence the weeds on WB main). The phone box was almost across from current Advanced Drainage's bumper. IIRC, one of our brakemen filed a complaint after stepping in a battery vault or something in the snow once. There was a bunch of 'old junk' still there (90s) from the signal installation.

As ct said - Take a quickie on google maps and you can clearly see the house on E Chemung Street, which was obscured by the embankment between E Chemung and Ithaca Street. That part of the embankment was cleaned up/removed in the early 90s a part of the ball-field project. The triplex power line is very visible in both pics, running from the corner of Ithaca St southeast to Donnelly Pkwy. The utility line running east-west along E Chemung Street is also visible in OP and google. Look at the field in on the hill behind the bridge - it's a bit grown up now and there's a mobile home collection up there, but it all matches.

As for Snow Birds/White Elephants west of Sayre, the first few times I saw them was on the main between Burdett and Lodi, trundling along with everything but the kitchen sink while we picked apples around 1970. My grandfather, being a DL&W man, liked the LV better than the Erie, but he didn't think much of a RR painting engines white.

If someone happens to be in the area with a very long telephoto lens, maybe they could try it out as an experiment. Given the depth compression going on (I too had attempted to count the joints and came up with about 750 ft to where it looked like the curve started) I'm still thinking the photographer (taking, not the one in, the picture) could've been as far back as the current Broad St bridge. Try to take a similar one from a vantage point somewhere back there and see if the curve "shortens" that much. Granted I know it would be difficult to do without the train and bridge for reference, but I think if you could zoom far enough you'd at least be able to see the current grade crossing and make something of it -- see if it does in fact show up at such a steep angle. The longest lens I've really had the pleasure of using in regular service was about 300mm at most... I'm thinking with this level of compression we're talking about 700mm or longer honestly.

Charles, the person you're in contact with wouldn't happen to remember how long of a lens he was using at that time, would he?

Not to further belabor the point, but... last night I looked through my collection of LV books to see if there were any photos of this location taken from a different angle.

On page 108 of Robert Yanosey's book "Lehigh Valley in Color - 2" there is a pic taken from the south of the Broad St - Erie bridges. In it you can see the eastward home signal, the telephone box, pole line, the curve in the distance and the west approach embankment of Rt 17C.

My immediate thought was that the OP's photo was taken from the west end of the Broad St. bridge using a telephoto lens as noted in other posts.

The photographer by the telephone box may not have been aware of his picture being taken since the photo was taken from some hundreds of feet away. The train was probably moving at a slow speed as it was departing Sayre.

The point at which the picture was taken probably does not exist any more, as it looks like the current Broad St Extension bridge was moved to the north. Probably to replace the original one which was very close to the former Erie bridge over the lV.

ctclark1 wrote:Charles, the person you're in contact with wouldn't happen to remember how long of a lens he was using at that time, would he?

I've written them.

From George: "pre-war Exacta 35mm single lens reflex and I had a monstrously heavy 300 mm telephoto."

Charles

I'm on board too now.
This morning I did the following calculation, based on 2 facts: straight lines are still straight lines with a telephoto, and at any distance, height to width ratios are what they are with a normal (50 mm?) lens.
a. From maps, from Broad St Extension north to Ithaca St. is a nearly perfectly straight tangent of about 2000 feet. The next 1000 ft to the 17C bridge is a slight bend to the right. On a map, I drew a line extending the line of the tangent to 17C. From this point to where the actual current track is is about 25 yards or 75 ft or so. (In other words, the actual track at the bridge is 75 feet to the right of where it would be if the line had no bend.) So the question is, is this 75 feet consistent with the "sharp bend" in the original photo I and others have been referring too. My instinct would say no - the bend in the photo is much larger, but we all agree telephotos can be deceiving.
b. On the original poster's photo, I drew a line extending the tangent in the photo until it hits about where the foot of the embankment of the bridge would be (just to the left of the edge of the photo, behind and to the left of that white building). I then measured the horizontal distance from that point to the beginning of the span where the tracks would be. This distance is about 3 times the clearance under the bridge. This would have to match up with the 75 feet I came up with in (a)
c. I estimated the clearance under the bridge in 2 ways. One was to say it looks like a high span for a RR bridge, so I guessed at 25 feet. Second, I looked at the picture of the bridge undergoing demolition. The clearance of the bridge is about 5 times the horizontal distance between the vertical ribs on the bridge ironwork. I guessed (from perhaps having seen others bridges like this with vertical ribs) this was 4 or 5 feet. That would make the clearance 20 - 25 feet. So 25 feet seems a reasonable assumption for the clearance. (would that be in an old timetable?)
d. Going back to (b), the 25 foot clearance would imply the distance that the actual track at the bridge is moved from where it would be it where all a perfectly straight tangent is 3 times the span height, or 3 x 25 = 75 feet. That is almost exactly what the distance is on maps (my part (a)).

So indeed the extreme bend in the telephoto is can be explained by a bend in the track of only 75 feet or so - my instinct from looking at the telephoto shot, which was that it had to be much larger, is wrong. So I'm on board with the rest of you now. Telephotos are deceiving.

Counting rails, it seems about 25-30 rails from the phone box to where the bend begins. So perhaps the phone box is about 800-1000 feet south of Ithaca St, about 1900 feet south of the bridge.

Jim S.

That is a neat suggestion that someone made to take a photo from that approx location with a telephoto lens. One word of warning. How a telephoto appears depends not just on the focal length (the 300 mm number), but also on the film size (used to be 35 mm) or the size of the electronic imaging chip in modern cameras. Those sizes vary, and I don't know how to compare focal lengths of modern cameras with old 35 mm cameras even if I knew the imager size. If I have time tomorrow I can search on the web - somewhere there must be a page with all the numbers.

BR&P thanks for the nice comment..

Chemung St was the original alignment and was grade crossing.

The new alignment of RT 17c was done sometimes between 1910 and 1931. Most likely in 1929 as there is design project for the bridge over river. There is design project done by LV (assumption) for that bridge and apparently we don't have it. So it has to be 1929 when they build the bridge.

The record plan in 1931 showed the same one as we saw in the picture.

Broad St was re-aligned in 1977. And previous bridge is right south of that. And it showed the throat of yard ( I think that's correct termology (sp) for RR word?) just north of that bridge. Unless drafter included the tracks in the work which tracks may had been removed already.

here's the record plan of the bridge...

The 2 utility lines over RR in Earthgoogle does pretty much confirm the 2 lines over RR in photo in approximate locations.

See my orange line next to the lines in attached.