The Algoma Eastern Railway purchased two identical Consolidation (2-8-0 wheel arrangement) locomotives from Montreal Locomotive works. Number 55 arrived in January 1921 and are nearly identical to Canadian Government Railway engines. After being modified by adding weight to the front to prevent the pilot trucks from derailing it was said that they had hauling capacity equal to CPR P-2 class Mikados.
By the end of the 1920’s Algoma Eastern #55 was absorbed into the CPR and re numbered to 3955. The locomotive remained essentially the same with the addition of a feedwater heater over the boiler.
I plan on building a model of #55 and recently able to buy a negative of a builders photo from Montreal Locomotive works to add to my collection and help with this process. The negative was part of a collection that belonged to the assistant editor for Illinois Central Employee Magazine that was in print from 1917-49. It has a good number of scratches and stains as it has appeared in several publications over the years.
I have never digitized a large negative and as I researched how to I learned how scanning a large negative is a challenge for a home user. In order to capture all of the detail of a negative as large as this you need the light to pass through the negative and form an image on another surface. Scanners for slides and 35mm negatives are quite affordable however equipment for this larger size doesn’t make sense for a one off scan.
I was lucky enough to be introduced to Smokestack Studios in Toronto. They have equipment that can scan images at 150 megapixels creating a crisp digital reproduction that is virtually perfect edge to edge. I was worried about the condition of the negative and I wanted to make sure I could use a process that could capture all the detail that is here.
Digital images captured at 150 Megapixels are absolutely huge. So big in fact that they are difficult to store and share. This negative was almost 1000 mb. For the purposes of sharing online I have brought the size down to be more manageable. There is way more detail in the original file but this is a reasonable compromise. Below are a few detail shots:
