Nearly 40 Years Ago. Leitz Telyt-V 280mm

After using the mammoth Telyt 400mm lens for yesterday's Blip, I was reminded of a photograph, freshly scanned, taken nearly 40 years ago in July 1983.  The Railway Society of Southern Africa had organized a special train to run from the City of Port Elizabeth - now called Gqeberha - to the little coastal resort town of Knysna. 

This was the last "grice" I did with a dear and ever-indulgent friend before leaving South Africa for Boston.  We had driven from his home town of George very early on a chilly winter morning to wait for the train as it emerged from a precipitous passage - the Toorwaterpoort - through the mountains on its west-bound journey. We drove for more than an hour to near the little town of De Rust. I found what looked like a good spot to line up the train against the brooding foothills of the Swartberg (Black Mountain) range. That spot happened to be - literally - in the middle of a plowed field. Hoping the local farmer wouldn't show up and evict us from his field, we set up shop to wait. I remember there was a sharp pocket knife - which I still have -, and a few sticks of biltong (dried ostrich meat seasoned with salt and coriander seeds) to gnaw on, and there we sat in the freezing cold of the early morning to wait for the train. My memory is a bit vague as to the details. We weren't sure exactly when it would show up, and after about an hour, and no sign of its approach, a heated discussion may have ensued about whether "somebody" had dropped the ball, gotten the times wrong, and the train, in fact, was further west already. While the conversation was taking place, and we were suitably distracted, of course, the train showed up - and I bungled the shots. Nothing for it; run for the car and burn some rubber to get ahead of the train, and try again. I remember the dirt road crossed the tracks on a rise, and I was driving so fast, that all four wheels of the little car left the ground simultaneously. Rounded a corner, and there it was, paused at a tiny wayside halt, and just enough time to do a grab shot with the big tele lens as the train started to roll again.
Regrettably, I no longer have the negatives from this grice so I scanned from an 8x10 print that I had made years ago. Optical quality is not "optimal", as the radiologists would say. I didn't remember after all these years exactly where the photograph was taken. With a combination of Google Earth, flying over the countryside in the satellite, and a wonderful set of topographical maps produced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s, I was able to narrow down the name of the halt. The maps, a fabulous example of the cartographer's art, were scanned by the University of Texas and uploaded to their website. I believe this is Vlakteplaas siding. The leafless poplar trees and muted colors are signs of mid-winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
As things turned out, I still captured the train in geographic context; those are the brooding foothills of the Swartberg in the background. One also gets some idea of a tiny, rural halt in the days of the South African Railways: a little goods shed in pristine condition, along with the ramp for loading sheep, cattle or perhaps ostriches onto a train.  I found recent images online; it looks very different now - and not in a good way.