Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
Sep 10, 2026, 6:22 PMPennsylvania Avenue Subway" Tunnel, Former Reading Railroad City Branch, Philadelphia, 2004.
All the pixels, none of the transportation, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/2148915615
Replies
- Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.socialSep 10, 2026, 6:23 PM
Captured with a Fuji GX680 camera, 80mm lens, T-Max 100 film. Some tilt was applied to control focus. It was very dark in there, and focusing required the use of a flashlight.
The Pennsylvania Avenue Subway was built to provide a sub-grade freight connection between the Reading Railroad's main line and its "City Branch". It served the Baldwin Locomotive Works' Callowhill plant and, later, the Philadelphia Inquirer's printing plant, among other Center City industries. Abandoned in the 1980's.
- Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.socialSep 10, 2026, 6:23 PM
The GX680 was a fun but very unusual camera that couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. It was a truly gigantic beast of a medium format SLR camera providing (limited) view camera movements. It used 120-format roll film with a 6x8cm frame (so a 3:4 aspect ratio), with a built-in autowinder. It's sort of what you'd get if you somehow merged a Nikon F4, a Hasselblad, and a Crown Graphic. Definitely not a point & shoot camera.
- Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.socialSep 10, 2026, 6:25 PM
Fun fact: the Reading was a major northeastern US railroad (made famous internationally by its place on the Monopoly gameboard), which ceded its rail business in 1976 to the newly formed Conrail consortium. But the company kept most of its non-railroad real estate holdings, and today mostly operates cinemas (including NYC's Angelika) in several countries.
(The Reading Company was named for the Pennsylvania city, and so is pronounced like the color, not what you do with words on a page.)
just_one_bearjust_one_bear@mastodon.socialSep 10, 2026, 9:54 PM@mattblaze My non-original joke is "it's not reeding, but redding because it's all so old it's in the past tense."
KanaMaunaKanaMauna@sauropods.winSep 11, 2026, 2:38 AM@mattblaze that pronunciation just broke Monopoly for me
Andrew Bartlettabartlet@mastodon.nzoss.nzSep 10, 2026, 7:41 PM@mattblaze Do you know if there are any plans to do anything more interesting with it in the current era?
- Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.socialSep 10, 2026, 7:45 PM
@abartlet It's not particularly well suited for re-use. It's not really long enough to make sub-surface transit especially compelling, and one end of it is at an isolated location next to a freight railroad and a park. And the other end is now a parking lot used by the new police headquarters.