I recently spent some time in Salem, NY, an upstate town near the Vermont border. My family owns some property nearby, and we used to visit at least once a summer. A highlight for me was going down to the D&H railroad tracks that passed through town. If I got lucky, I saw a train rumble by, on its way to Castelton, VT, or Eagle Bridge, NY. One day in 1969 I watched a small freight go by, and happened to have my camera.

On the recent visit, I tried to re-create some of the shots I took that day years ago, to get a side-by-side of what the town looked like then and now, since the tracks were torn out years ago. The “then” shot below had a car from that era waiting for the train to go by, and I thought it would be fun to get a current car in the “now” shot. No sooner had I thought that, than the car you see stopped, the driver looked at her cell phone for about a minute (long enough for me to take a few shots), and then drove off. I thank her for posing.