Vicksburg's Railroad Bridges and Crossings (More Snow)

Vicksburg, Mississippi, has been an important railroad town since before the Civil War. One of the reasons that General Grant considered this to be a crucial strategic objective in the Civil War was the railroad infrastructure. The railroad from the western Confederate states (Texas and Louisiana) came through Vicksburg on the way to Jackson, Meridian, and other eastern Confederate cities. Once Vicksburg surrendered, the Union Navy totally controlled the Mississippi River and the Confederacy was split. This meant food and other crucial supplies could not move east from the western states.

The train still comes through Vicksburg. Let us take a quick tour of the railroad bridges in town. I suspect many motorists just rush over and do not pay any attention to the tracks below.

Mississippi River from Vicksburg, view west towards Louisiana, 1996, Kodachrome slide, Nikon F3 camera

Before the construction of the old bridge, rail cars were ferried across the Mississippi River by barges. This must have been dangerous work considering currents and changing water levels. The Vicksburg Bridge & Terminal Co. built the first bridge first bridge across the river (on the right in the photograph above) during 1928-1930. It uses three cantilevered truss spans and three Parker truss spans (from National Park Service). It formerly carried US 80 (the Dixie Overland Highway) but has been closed to car traffic since 1998. The bridge on the left was built in 1972 to carry Interstate 20.

KCS tracks from North Frontage Road, view NW towards Washington Street, Jan. 16, 2018, Fomapan 100 film

After emerging from the bridge on the Vicksburg side of the river, the track makes a long turn to the north under the interstate off ramp. The photograph above is from North Frontage Road looking to the northwest. North Washington Street runs on the hill in the snow in the distance.

View underneath North Frontage Road bridge (Tri-X film, Hasselblad 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

This is the view from underneath the North Frontage Road bridge, which crosses Stouts Bayou and the railroad (no snow in this 2020 photograph).

KCS tracks from North Washington Street, view SE, Jan 16, 2018, Fomapan 100 film

The tracks run underneath South Washington Street and head north to the Kansas City Southern rail yard. The view above is to the south. I waited for a train, but it was cold, and snow was falling on the camera.

KCS tracks view north from S. Washington Street, Fomapan 100 classic film

From Washington Street, look north and you can see the KCS rail yard in the distance. The track in the distance to the right makes a turn and runs under Washington Street again to the cut between Belmont and West Pine Streets.

Long-closed Fairground Street Keystone bridge from under KCS tracks, Hasselblad, 80mm Planar-CB lens, Kodak Panatomic-X film

The Fairground Street Bridge has been closed to cars and pedestrians for decades. It crossed the KCS rail yard. This photograph is from under the rail line that follows Pearl Street and eventually turns under Washington Street.

Washington Street railroad tunnel, April 2015, Panatomic-X film, Fuji GW690II camera, 90mm lens

Railroad cut between Belmont and West Pine Streets

This valley between Belmont and West Pine Streets must have been cut by the railroad before the Civil War. It is a rather convoluted route but may have followed natural gullies that required minimal dirt removal. The photograph above is from the Monroe Street bridge.

KCS tracks from Mission 66, view west, Hasselblad, 250mm Sonnar lens

KCS tracks from Mission 66, view east with Baldwin Ferry bridge in distance, Fomapan 100 film, Hasselblad, 250mm Sonnar lens

KCS tracks from Baldwin Ferry Road bridge, view east towards Vicksburg National Military Park, Hasselblad, 250mm Sonnar lens

As the Kansas City Southern rail moves inland, it passes under the bridges at Mission 66 and Baldwin Ferry Road. I expect most people drive over and barely pay any attention to the tracks below. In summer, the view is rather dull, but the snow made the scene interesting by outlining the topography.

KCS tracks from Old Highway 27, view towards 2-Mile Bridge, Vicksburg National Military Park

From here, the tracks head east towards Bovina, cross the Big Black River, and continue on to Edwards and Jackson. Back to the Vicksburg waterfront, the Vicksburg Southern Railroad runs along North Washington Street and on to Redwood and just north of the International Paper Company mill.

Vicksburg Southern Railroad tracks view south from Haining Road, Tri-X 400 film

Vicksburg Southern Railroad tracks passing through Vicksburg Forest Products lumber processing yard, Tri-X 400 film, Hasselblad, 250mm Sonnar lens 

Vicksburg Southern Railroad from Redwood, view south to International Paper Vicksburg Mill, Panatomic-X film, Rolleiflex 3.5E, 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens. 

This ends out short tour of railroad tracks and bridges. These were all film photographs. Thank you for reading.

Snow in Vicksburg, Mississippi (B&W film)

Dear readers, the heat is here, and the winter of 2018-2019 is fading away into memory. Other than a minor dusting of snow sometime in January, we did not see any of the white stuff. But the winter of 2017-2018 was much more interesting, with three real snowfalls. Because this is a rare phenomenon here in central Mississippi, it is worth recording on film. I bopped out with the Hasselblad and tripod as soon as I could while the white stuff was still falling or just afterwards. Here are a few examples (click any photograph to expand to 1600 pixels wide).

Beulah Cemetery, MLK Jr. Blvd., Vicksburg (50mm Distagon lens, Kodak Panatomic-X film)

Zollinger's Hill Road, Vicksburg (50mm Distagon lens, Fomapan 100 classic film)

Zollingers Hill Road drops steeply down from MLK Jr. Blvd. In the snow, it looks like a country lane. In one of the snowfalls, the city closed it because of the slick surface.

Sycamore Avenue, Vicksburg (80mm Planar lens, Panatomic-X film)

Sycamore Avenue is another small road that drops down into a valley from MLK Jr. Blvd. Once there were small homes along Sycamore, but most have been demolished. When I took this picture on December 8, 2017, the snow was melting quickly, and I wanted to capture the scene in soft light.

West Pine and KCS railroad cut from Belmont Street (80mm Planar lens, Panatomic-X film)

This is the railroad cut between West Pine and Belmont Streets. This has carried the railroad between Vicksburg and Jackson since before the Civil War. Once, there were many more cottages on the opposite slope.

Washington Street, view north (80mm Planar lens, Fomapan 100 film)

Vans, 2640 Washington Street (80mm Planar lens, Fomapan 100 film)

Heading west, we reach Washington Street, unusually quiet on a snowy morning. I have been unable to do much photographically with Washington Street, but the snow added contrast and eye interest.

Fairground Street (80mm Planar lens, Fomapan 100 film, yellow filter)

Fairground Street drops down to the west from Washington Street. These little cottages at the west end of Fairground Street have been here for decades. I have photographed them before. Most appear to be occupied.

2521 Pearl Street (80mm Planar lens, Fomapan 100 film, yellow filter)

This duplex on Pearl Street is on the east side of the street and faces the railroad tracks. All the cottages on the west side of the tracks have been demolished as have many on the east side, but I photographed them years ago.

Fairground Street Bridge (80mm Planar lens, Fomapan 100 film)

The Fairground Street Bridge is a Keystone bridge from the late-1800s. It is in poor condition and may be demolished despite its historical significance as being one of the only bridges of its type in Mississippi. I wrote about it in 2017. According to the Vicksburg Post,

"Nancy Bell, executive director of the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation, said the bridge is listed as the oldest in the state, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Mississippi landmark. 

The bridge was closed to traffic in 1995 as unsafe. Its approach at the intersection of Pearl and Fairground streets is overgrown with trees and other vegetation, and the crumbling structure crosses over the Kansas City Southern Railroad yard."

Way to go, Vicksburg, make us proud! Demolish a historic engineering landmark, while meanwhile trying to promote the city as a tourist destination.

Durden Creek, Waterways Experiment Station (February 2010 snowfall, Sony DSC-R1 digital file) 

3000 block of Drummond Street, view south (February 2010 snowfall, Sony DSC-R1 digital file)

I found some snow files from the winter of 2010.

KCS tracks, Warrior's Trail, Bovina (80mm Planar lens, polarizing filter, Fomapan 100 film)

These are the Kansas City Southern tracks next to Warrior's Trail near the town of Bovina. The sun was just coming out and the light was magical briefly.

Highway US 80 over the Big Black River, Bovina (50mm Distagon lens, polarizer filter, Fomapan 100 film)

 Finally, this is the US 80 bridge over the Big Black River a short distance east of Bovina.

KCS railroad bridge, Big Black River, Bovina (50mm Distagon lens, yellow filter, Fomapan 100 film)

A short distance south of the US 80 bridge is this concrete arch bridge, which carries the Kansas City Southern railroad tracks over the Big Black. I am not sure when it was built, but an arch bridge this high  is unusual for Mississippi. The dark stain on the concrete shows how high the Big Black can rise after heavy rains in west central Mississippi.

This ends out short snow tour of Vicksburg and immediate area. Come back to this article when it is 100° F during some scorcher of a muggy summer day.

All square photographs are from my Hasselblad 501CM camera. I scanned the negatives with a Minolta Scan Multi medium format film scanner controlled by SilverFast Ai software, running on an old Windows 7 computer.

The Long View and some GAS: 250mm Sonnar Lens for the Hasselblad

Dear Readers, a confession: I suffered from GAS a few months ago. No, I did not eat baked beans or cabbage; I had Gear Acquisition Syndrome. All photographers suffer GAS to some degree or another, especially the ones who deny it! Last year, a friend let me use his 150mm Sonnar lens on a Hasselblad, and I enjoyed the longer reach compared to the 75-80mm lenses from past experience with my Rolleiflexes. Afterwards, while perusing eBay (a dangerous habit), I saw a 250 mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens for $87, bid on it, and, amazingly, it was mine. So, for about $100 total, a magnificent Zeiss lens from the best of 1967 West German craftsmanship took up residence in my camera bag.

This is one of the chrome-plated units with single-coated glass, as opposed to the contemporary Zeiss T* multi-coating. Multi-coating has its greatest benefit in reducing flare in complicated wide-angle lenses, especially if they have large front elements, but usually has less noticeable effect with tele lenses. These Zeiss lenses were always built with baffles and edge paint on the elements to reduce flare, so they always performed well, even in glarey light.

But regardless of coating, you should always use a hood, and this is true for any lens. In this case, a Hasselblad Bay 50 hood cost half as much as the lens did. As the years go by, accessories become rare and the prices go way up. Decades ago, real camera stores often had drawers full of camera and lens fittings, filters, and accessories, often at reasonable price. Where have all these things gone? Were they mass disposed in dumpsters over the years or hoarded in cabinets of eBay customers?

The shutter speeds on this old-timer sounded good, although 1 sec. may have been a bit slow. But with some exercise, it smoothed out and appears to be fine as per correctly exposed negatives. The coating was pristine.

Clay Street, Vicksburg, Kodak Tri-X 400 film

Old Courthouse Museum, Vicksburg. The old Clay Street YMCA is on the right. Kodak Tri-X 400 film

Here are two examples taken with the 250mm Sonnar from the 4th floor of the Relax Inn in Vicksburg. The proprietor generously let me go to the balcony with my tripod. The light was misty, accounting for the soft contrast.

Washington Street view north, Vicksburg, Fomapan 100 film

Kansas City Southern (KCS) tracks view east from Mission 66 bridge, Vicksburg, Fomapan 100 film

Yes, it does occasionally snow in Vicksburg. We had two snowfalls this winter. It is such an unusual event, I could not resist recording the scene.

KCS tracks from Baldwin Ferry Road, Vicksburg. Fomapan 100 film

KCS tracks and rail yard from Washington Street, Vicksburg. Fomapan 100 film

So far, I have used the 250 lens on a tripod, thereby letting me stop down to f/8 or smaller. It is sharp, and contrasty - what is not to like? (To see more detail, click any picture to expand to 1600 pixels wide). Next bit of GAS: some Bayonet 50 filters, and maybe one of the 120mm lenses.

Hasselblad advertisement, Popular Photography, March 1981, p. 72.

UPDATE May 2021: The 250mm Sonnar continues to serve well. It is a spectacular lens.

Cement Silos of Redwood with Fomapan 100 Film

In 2010, I wrote about the deserted cement silos in Redwood, Mississippi. They are still abandoned and loom up above Hwy. 3 in all their concrete ugliness. It is a good site to test film, and I returned to test Fomapan 100 Classic film in my Fuji GW690II medium format camera. The tracks lead to the International Paper mill just to the north.

The brush is pretty thick and it is hard to reach the silos from the former work yard on the west. This photo is not completely sharp because of camera motion.

A hulking ruined concrete mass is in the work yard. Did they pour unwanted concrete into some sort of bin?

This is a loading dock on the railroad side of the main building. Being winter, there were no obvious snakes, bats, or poison ivy present.

This is one of the chutes that would dispense powder into trucks. This was a 4 min. exposure at ƒ/11. The light meter indicated 30 sec. at ƒ/11, but I knew that to adjust for the film's reciprocity, I should use 8 times the metered exposure. Reciprocity failure means that in dim light, film no longer responds in a linear fashion to increasing exposure time. Most film is linear in the range of 1 sec. to 1/1000 sec., but if you are in the range of many seconds or minutes exposure, you need to multiply the light meter setting many times. A Wikipedia article describes the phenomena, or contact me if you want to do some film photography and I would be glad to help.

Film: Fomapan 100 Classic.
Camera: Fuji GW690II with 90mm lens.
Development: Xtol by Praus Productions, Rochester, NY
Scanning: Minolta Scan Multi using SilverFast Ai software, 2820 dpi.
Resize for web display: ACDSee Pro 2.5.

Vicksburg Decay 2016 with Fomapan 100 Film

Mercy Hospital, Vicksburg (currently unused)

This is a three-part experiment: a new film, a commercial laboratory I had not tried before, and new scanner software (I know, I know, too many degrees of freedom).

Experiment 1: A few months ago, I read some highly positive reviews of Adox CHS 100 film, a classical fine-grain black and white film. While in Berlin last September, I stopped at Fotoimpex (a real film store) to buy some, but they were out of stock. The sales agent suggested I try Fomapan 100 Classic, a similar film made in the Czech Republic. Fomapan was established in 1921, so it has a long history of making sensitized materials for the photographic industry.

In December here in Vicksburg, during some overcast days with soft light, I tried a couple of rolls of the Fomapan in my big Fuji GW690II camera (this is a medium format rangefinder camera that takes eight 6×9 frames on a roll of 120 film). I like days with soft light when an exposure will reveal details in the shadows, such as under porch roofs. My usual practice is to overexpose and underdevelop to soften the contrast, so I exposed the Fomapan at EI (exposure index) 64.

Experiment 2: I did not have time to develop the film at home, so I sent it to Praus Productions in Rochester, New York. Praus developed the film in Xtol developer at N-1 (pull one stop), as I specified. The negatives looked pretty good, a bit dense but with full exposure range. Next time I will try EI 80 or 100 to just slightly reduce exposure.

Experiment 3. The Minolta scanning software that came with my "antique" Minolta Scan Multi scanner was pretty kludgy and was low resolution on a modern big monitor. Surprisingly, the German company Lasersoft Imaging still sells a version of their Silverfast Ai software for the Scan Multi. I thought the price was outrageous, but a Christmas 25% sale made it a bit more palatable, so I bought a license for Ai. It runs on my Windows 7 computer and correctly controls the scanner. Result: major improvement over the Minolta software with far more options for film profiles. Note: many photographers use Vuscan software, but I could never get it to work.

Zollinger's Hill Road

Results: Well, I am pleased. These are beautiful full-tone negatives. They have similar grain to Kodak Tri-X, which this reinforces the classical B&W look (which can't be simulated with software). The photograph above of Zollinger's Hill Road almost looks like the bushes are covered with frost, sort of a hidden garden. Click any picture to enlarge it and see the texture.

This is Marcus Street near where it intersects Confederate Avenue. The house is no. 1620. This was a 1/2 sec exposure at f/22, with fill flash to add some light on the tree trunk.

This cottage at 1630 Marcus Street is empty.

These steps are next to 1630 and lead down to Ethel Street. During summer, the jungle mostly engulfs the steps.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd. is the former Openwood Street, leading from downtown east to the Vicksburg Military National Park. It is one of Vicksburg's older streets and is lined with historic cottages.

The cottage at 1900 MLK, Jr., Blvd. suffered a fire.

No. 1826 MLK, Jr., Blvd. is a 1920s or 1930s cottage, now empty.

No. 1832 is a duplex partly sheathed with the concrete material shaped to look like limestone blocks.

In the future, you will see more examples of this Fomapan film as well as the ever-dependable Kodak Tri-X. In the USA, you can order Foma products from Freestyle Photographic Supplies in Los Angeles. Support companies that sell film, and take pictures with film. Really, it will make you a better photographer.

Historic Foma posters are courtesy of Freestyle Photographic Supplies, Los Angeles, California.