Common experiences which span the globe. . .

 

 My unsung heroes: Robert and Bruce Wheatley sign their books, Thirlmere, NSW Australia, 2012

These two guys pictured above--I'd like you to meet them. Though they're a decade older than I am, and we grew up half a world away from each other, we shared more than a few common experiences growing up. Probably at the risk of shame and ridicule of their schoolmates, they spent a good portion of their teenage years hanging around railroad yards, talking to railroaders, photographing railroaders, riding trains. Soaking it all in.

Just like I did.

I'm sure it seemed like an idiotic pursuit to some at the time--even to those railroaders who let them into their world, who likely asked (as they asked me) "why are you off playing sports or chasing girls instead of photographing these goddamned dirty old locomotives?" Yes, indeed.

As teenagers, we probably didn't really realize that the scenes that seemed so contemporary would soon enough become history, and our photographs part of that historical record. Today, even the fact that we teenagers were able to roam pretty much at will in the railroad environment taking photographs seems entirely foreign to today's generation of young rail photographers. How were we able to get such photos? Didn't the railroaders mind? Didn't you get thrown out?

You'd be hard-pressed to walk into a railroad terminal today and just start clicking away without getting your ass thrown off of the property. That is, if you can find an employee on the property. Railroad employment isn't what it used to be. Clerks are gone, train order operators a thing of the past. Maintenance crews have been mechanized and pared down to a bare minimum. Those employees who do remain are especially wary of photographers on the property--it's part of the drill instilled constantly to railroaders in this Post-9/11 world. And if you're a railroader not scared shitless about a terrorist blowing you up, you're probably concerned the guy with the pot belly and camera is there to spy on you and give the evidence to a company officer, who will probably find SOMETHING you're doing wrong and find a way to get rid of you.

So, there's that paranoia. And more paranoia.

I was lucky, for a couple of reasons, to pick up a camera in 1974 for the first time and not in 2004. Back then, railroaders generally didn't give a shit if you made everything short of a nuisance of yourself. As long as you didn't get hurt, and made yourself scarce when the officials stopped by (and sometimes, even they were okay with it), everything was kosher. But beyond that, certainly my youth figured into no one paying the kid with a camera much mind. I clearly wasn't old enough to be a company spy, and many of the railroaders had kid brothers or sons my age, so I didn't present a threat.

I don't think my experiences growing up and photographing railroads were that much different than my contemporaries or predecessors. I was caught between a black and white and color era, however, so it wasn't until I was financially able to shoot lots of Kodachrome after getting that first job out of college that my work started to transition away from black and white and into color. And when you're paying $15 (in 1980 currency) for 36 exposures of Kodachrome vs. pennies for the same roll of Tri-X, you tended to reach for the Tri-X for anything that seemed experimental or risky. Which, to me, was most of the human interest photography. 

Kodachrome was expensive, so you didn't squander it on low margin people photographs. Then, not long after the turn of the century, cheap digital SLR's became available, and cost was no longer a factor. But by then, of course, there weren't many people to photography anymore on the railroad. Ironically, freedom to squander exposures at will returned just when railroads became considerably less photographic. I only wish today's young, creative rail photographers had the wonderful railroad infrastructure--roundhouse and depots and especially the human infrastructure--to photograph.

Hopefully, our creative influences will be their influences as well. And judging from the quality of work exhibited on line from around the world, there's no shortage of talent picking up the torch. And I've found that I'm still inspired and influenced and finding new heroes.

Meet Robert and Bruce Wheatley. On my last trip to Australia in 2012, I had the pleasure of meeting my newest heroes of documentary rail photography at the Thirlmere Steam Festival in New South Wales, signing copies of their two books, Railway Portraits Vols. I & II. We shared experiences photographing trains as teenagers, and like me, Robert and Bruce had remarkably tolerant parents who didn't forbid their sons from hanging out on the railroad making photographs. They started a decade before I did, when steam was still firmly in command of the rail lines radiating out of Sydney. And just as I'd experienced in the states, railroaders in their homeland were just as welcoming and understanding to their pursuits as the guys in Wishram, Tacoma, and Auburn, Washington were to mine.

It's a shame the Wheatley's aren't better known outside of Australia, but in my own small way, I like to try to spread the word about their work. It's intimate and documentary, graphic as well as scenic.  And all in beautiful black and white. And if you can set aside your reluctance to embrace locomotives with round cab windows and buffer plates, I think their work will certainly grow on you.

You can order their books--there's now a THIRD volume--at http://www.railwaybookshop.com.au//
and search using the word "Wheatley."

Here's a small sampling of their work, too: of course, the Wheatley brothers own the copyright, so we're reproducing a few here under the guise of a review. Enjoy!

 Volumes I & II, Railway Portraits

 Fettlers, Muswellbrook, 1969

 

Staff exchange, Tumulla, 1966

 Fuel man, Vic Rivett, Tarana, 1965

 Cycling to work, Industrial Drive, Port Waratah, 1972

Wishram, Pt. II/Spring break destination, 1978!

It's 11:30pm, and train #75 pauses at Wishram for a quickie crew change before GP38-2 2090, and its GP9/F9A/C424 brethren move 108 cars east towards Pasco.

It took nine months after I moved to Seattle before I first visited Wishram, on a three-day, extended-weekend trip with fellow Seattle railfan Stan Lytle. We rolled into the remote division point near midnight after a long day on the road, sleeping in the back of his truck in a wide spot along an access road west of the depot. My initial appreciation of the place was hindered by the non-stop train action after sunrise; after a couple of hours, we left town in hasty pursuit of an eastbound headed to Pasco.

After my next visit--another quickie, with Portland railfan Dave Nicoletti in February 1978--I'd made plans to return for a longer visit. While many of my high school classmates were anticipating their last Spring Break holiday with friends on a beach, I was headed for the Columbia River and Burlington Northern. I was fully infatuated with writing a photo essay for TRAINS magazine, emulating the work of my hero, photojournalist Ted Benson, who'd just published an issue-length feature on Nevada for the magazine. From what I saw in February, the remnants of the old Spokane, Portland & Seattle would make a great subject for my own masterpiece. It was to be the first of many, many solo trips away from home photographing railroads, and it proved a memorable adventure, including stranding my 1975 Monte Carlo high on a hillside above McNary dam (rescued by some good samaratins who heard my pleas for help on the C.B. radio), and locking myself out of the car in the Lunch Room parking lot at Wishram (dilemma solved by breaking out a window). But for a week, I lived the nomadic railfan life, wandering up and down the Columbia, sleeping in the back seat of the Monte, taking a detour down the Oregon Trunk for a couple of days (where I upgraded my accommodations and slept on the floor of the South Junction depot) and generally spending a good amount of time soaking in the atmosphere of Wishram.

It was really my first good exposure to division-point railroading in the hinterlands, and being just 18 years old at the time, really had no reference point to what I was looking at. It was all new to me, but without much experience, I didn't know now that it was railroading largely unchanged--apart from locomotives and corporate ownership--from the 1950s.

The Lunchroom, universally called "the beanery,"  was particularly fascinating to me: owned by Burlington Northern, its operation was contracted out on the stipulation that it remain open 24-hours to serve the train crews. Train lineups shared space with menus on the counter. A hamburger, fries and a Coke was just a buck and a quarter.

Clerks still compiled train lists inside the large frame depot. Crew management was done the "old school" way, a big, clear plastic board holding chits representing each engineman and train man. After each run, their name reverted to the bottom of the board; as each man was called out ahead of them, their names moved up until, ultimately, they were "atop the board"--or "first out," in the railroad vernacular.

And outside in the dark, trains rolled in, crews stepped off and new crews stepped on, and then rocketed off into the blackness of a desert night. Over at the roundhouse, strings of big Alco locomotives including the massive C636, rumbled in the night, smeling faintly of oil and dust, their asthmatic rumblings far different than the purr of an EMD. 

Unfailingly, the railroaders were friendly and accommodating of questions and their time. A conversation with midnight-shift train order operator Bob "RBA" Aldridge resulted in a repeated offer to help me ride out on a freight down the Oregon Trunk to Bend, Aldridge extolling the beauty of the Deschutes River canyon. With his long hair, big mustache and smartly dressed in a tailored vest, Aldridge seemed more like a hippy up from Portland than most of the railroaders working the place. And imagine my surprise nearly twenty years later rediscovering the negatives of the young railroader at work: I was a new-hire dispatcher in Burlington Northern's Seattle office, training on one of my first dispatching desks. . . with RBA himself!

What a week! And apart from a couple of cursory rolls of Kodachrome, it was all recorded on Plus-X and Tri-X--TRAINS magazine was largely still a black and white world back in 1978.  I hurried home, worked up what I thought was original and compelling text, accompanied it with a dozen or so photographs, and sent it off to editor David P. Morgan, sure that "Ghost in the Desert" would strike publishing gold.

I was wrong. In retrospect, compared to Benson's "Nevada" story, my text was too. . .well, "derivative" would be a good word. I chalked it up to experience, and filed the negatives away, largely forgotten for the next thirty years.

But they survived. And here's some of what I saw in 1978.

 

The biggest Alco locomotives on Burlington Northern, 3600 h.p. C636's 4366/4364 await the call at Wishram's roundhouse. They're right at home here, delivered to Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway in 1967 largely for use on the Oregon Trunk from Wishram to Bend and on to California.

 Quite the rakish dude with neat hair, sideburns, goatee/mustache and tailored vest, train order operator Robert "RBA" Aldridge types out a train order while working 3rd Trick at Wishram. Train orders controlled operations east and south of Wishram; CTC installed just before the 1970 BN merger guided trains to Vancouver.

Aldridge engages in little banter over a cup of coffee with roundhouse worker Robert Troutman in Wishram depot.

In the pre-centralized days of crew management, Wishram maintained its own crew and extra board engineer and trainman rosters. A trainman, top, checks his standing on the call board, above, while another, grip at the ready, registers in the ledger. Each round tag on the see-through board is marked with a railroader's name and depicts his availability to go to work relative to his position with the names of thers.

A reciept from the beanery calls the venue simply "Wishram Lunch Room."

 The center of Wishram's social life during the daytime, the beanery was considerably quieter at night, when it served mainly railroaders on a 24-hour schedule. Waitress Rose Calvin serves a customer, top, and later rests her feet conversing with the beanery's cook.

Westbound train #138 crosses the Celilo Bridge into Washington state, silhouetted by the late afternoon light.

Wishram: the true railroader's town/ part I

 Happy faces greet familar friends as a train of Boeing aircraft fuselage sections changes crews in front of the old depot and beanery in February 1979.

Given the pivotal role railroads played in the opening of the western United States, calling a place a "railroad town" really isn't too difficult to do. Many of the west's larger towns were, to some extent, created by the railroad. Quite a few were crucial to the development of the railroads, serving as terminals, major junctions, or locations of shops and repair facilities. 

In time, these towns got larger. Some became cities, commercial and retail centers, their populations supporting new industries, banks, shopping areas, and maybe in time, suburbs. To call these places "railroad towns" anymore wouldn't be accurate. Maybe they were "of" the railroad, but not "for" the railroad.

In 2014, there aren't too many true railroad towns left. Replacement of steam locomotives by the diesel since World War II killed many off. Greater operating efficiencies have found freight trains traveling longer distances between servicing or crew changes, or avoiding the need for reblocking or switching of trains. Like the Interstate highway system that bypassed vibrant small towns and hastened their demise, so too has modern railroading killed off many railroad towns.

One that still hangs in there is Wishram, Washington, about 100 miles east of Vancouver, wedged into a wide spot between the basalt cliffs and the North Bank of the Columbia River.

When platted by the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway in 1907, Wishram was called Fallbridge, a name it kept until 1926.  Space along the river was at a premium across from the mouth of the Deschutes River, where a trunk line towards Bend would depart from the new rail line connecting Spokane and Portland on a large steel bridge. But here, near the Celilo Falls where Native Americans used spears to fish, was room to wedge in a roundhouse, freight yard, resting facilities for livestock moving by rail, and a community to support it all.

Wishram was an important point on the SP&S. Traffic to and from the "Oregon Trunk" to Bend (and eventually California) was switched in and out of trains traveling along the Columbia River line. Locomotives were swapped out and serviced. Trains not needed in Portland or Vancouver were staged for later arrival. And trains swapped crews on the long trip between Vancouver and Pasco. So important was Wishram to the SP&S that the "shortland" telegraph designation of the places was simply "X"--as in, the crossroads, or "x marks the spot."

 Led by a burly Century 636 Alco once owned by SP&S, BN Train #139 takes the turn south across the Columbia River bridge at Wishram, en route to California. February 18, 1978.

Wishram was still a rip-roaring railroad town in 1978 when I made these photographs. The SP&S had been merged into the new Burlington Northern eight years earlier, but operations hadn't changed too much. The railroad still changed crews here, trains still switched, locomotives were added and subtracted to trains, and a large number of railroaders--clerks, train order operators, trainmen and engineers, mechanics and carmen, and the workers who maintained the tracks--made up the majority of the population.

The mayor of the town was a railroader. The town's largest property owner was a railroader. The volunteer fire department--railroaders. Wishram's small population--hardly ever over 1000--was overwhelmingly railroaders, at least until an aluminum smelter was opened a few miles east of town in the 1950s. When the smelter shut down in the late 1990s, the population contracted. But the railroaders remained.

The social center of Wishram, the 24-hour, 7-day a week Burlington Northern Lunch Room--known simply as "the beanery."

Though located along Washington Highway 14, the town wasn't THAT easy to get to. Until a wide, gently-graded road from the highway was built in from the east relatively recently, residents negotiated a steep, narrow, switchback along the cliffs that hid the town from view. If you needed gasoline, you had to go up by the highway--a wide spot called "Wishram Heights." There were a couple of bars, a church, and sporadically a general store. Most of the rest of the shopping was done in Goldendale, a couple dozen miles over the hills to the north, or across the river in The Dalles.

 

The railroad, though--the depot and 24-hour a day restaurant referred to simply as "the beanery"--was the social center of the town. Residents were a tight clique outsiders had a tough time breaking through to join. Newcomers were regarded with suspicion. Railroaders sent to this remote outpost discovered that housing was hard to come by. If you had a friend who'd let you bunk in his place, you were lucky. Otherwise, well, you could join those not so fortunate who inhabited one of the cardboard and lumber shacks burrowed into the hillside. You didn't have running water or a toilet or a telephone, of course--back then, when it was time to go to work, the railroad would send a "Caller" to wake you up and motivate you to get thee to the rail yard. You could shower in the yard office, and grab a bit to eat at the beanery.

Of course, even progress had to come to Wishram. In the early 1980s, Burlington Northern's bean-counters took aim at Wishram. A good portion of the freight yard was ripped out, the roundhouse closed, and the railroad-owned beanery closed down.  Bulldozers came in and removed the beanery and the old wood depot, replaced by a modern metal building with air conditioning and toilets that didn't leak. Crews were on their own for a place to eat. By then, there was only the Pastime Tavern to eat at. And drink. And there wasn't much else to do in Wishram than eat and drink. Or railroad.  And even that became a bit tougher to do in 1995 when BN eliminated the crew change in Wishram, running through between Vancouver and Pasco. Most of the crews and their families based in Wishram moved toward Vancouver. Clerks were cut off, operators found redundant, and maintenance crews reduced.

But really, it wasn't anything that hadn't occurred a hundred times over elsewhere in the west, as the true railroad town slipped further and further into the past.

Next: Nighttime at Wishram, in the yards, the depot and the beanery.

 Visitors to Wishram were greeted by a folk-art display in front of Edith Horne's place up on the road on the east side of town.

Drinking and railroading were overriding themes of Wishram; one abandoned tavern was evidently called "The Caboose."

Past its heyday, but still a bustling railroad town: Wishram, seen in 1978. The stock pens are in foreground center; the locomotive house is just to the right of the water tank.

 An eastbound train arrives in Wishram, pulling up the mainline for a crew change while other locomotives await assignment at the engine house. Both are products of builder Alco, and share lineage with Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway. By April 1978, Alcos were becoming scarce in the United States, and Burlington Northern assigned their fleet of Alcos to Vancouver, where former SP&S shopmen were familar with their idiocyncracies.

 Outside the engine house at Wishram, EMD and Alco power awaits assignment. . .

. . .an a former Northern Pacific RS11 pokes its nose into the old wooden structure. April, 1978

And outbound train crew relaxes outside the depot, awaiting their eastbound train. No hurries, no worries. And a belly full of lunch from the lunchroom next door.

The Road Goes On Forever. . .

 He's Gaining on us! February, 1978, Columbia River Gorge.

The highway calls my name.

It's always out there, tempting me to shuck responsibilities for a few hours, a few days, a month. . .just calling me, imploring me to put rubber on asphalt and head out.

It really doesn't matter where. A two-lane road is preferable. And if there's a railroad track next to it--well, that's just the icing on the cake. I've done it since I was old enough to drive--shit, I used to talk my parents into doing it for me--and I can't see giving it up now!

Everyone familiar with the lure of railroads and the open road has their favorite highways. Highway 6/50 between Provo, Utah and the Colorado line: diving into the narrows of the Wasatch, hugging curve-for-curve next to the double-track Rio Grande, climbing Soldier Summit and diving into the steep Price River Canyon. And beyond Helper, where the mountains open up--well, how great is that: another hundred-plus miles of baked mud desert down to Green River and up again to Colorado.
I've worn untold sets of tires out on the two-lane: the bitumen with abstract tar patterns laid across it where weather and an unsettled earth have risen up and cracked its surface. Desolate Utah 257 between Delta and Milford is like this--and the old "San Pedro" to Los Angeles is rarely more than 100 yards away, and the experience is sublime to drive south at dusk in the summer, windows down, maybe some Patsy Cline on the stereo, US&S searchlight signals keeping you company to a $30 motel room an hour down the road.

There's the granddaddy of them all, if you ask me, The Lincoln Highway, old US 30, which is high on the list of any train chaser's list, following the Union Pacific west from Lincoln all the way to Ogden, over 900 miles. Much of it, of course, has been erased by the modern Interstate 80, but bits and pieces survive. On the old highways, where vegetation closes in on the concrete slabs from the sides and from beneath,  one can set a rhythm with the "thunk-ka-thunk-ka-thunk-ka-thunk" coming from the tires beneath. And right alongside, UP squeezes the old two-lane against the timeless sandstone cliffs of Echo Canyon.

The two-lane forces you to slow down, of course. Maybe you're lucky in Idaho and still see a series of old "Stinker" gas station signs--one tattered relic from the 40s still standing near Mountain Home, Idaho, advises "Free Lava Boulders: bring one home to your mother in law!" There's old gas stations, hold hotels, mom and pop restaurants that hang on due to a few locals and the hungry curious who've wandered off the Interstate. If you love ghost towns, there's plenty of those too, folks who gave up after the new highways sucked away their business.

The list is endless. Don't Forget Winona, indeed, on the Mother Road, old Route 66, following the Rock Island, the Southern Pacific, and then The Santa Fe to California. There's Highway 99, in California's Central Valley: town after town bisected by the highway and Southern Pacific. Highway 2, the fabled "Hi Line" across Montana--hello, Great Northern.

Do you have your favorite?

It's always time well spent, even if I don't see a train. But I usually do. Then the heart rate ratchets up. Sometimes, there's a quick U-turn to backtrack ahead of a fast-moving freight. The sensation of trains at night are magnified: the roar of exhaust, whine of traction-motors, the pinging and banging of wheels and the howl of flanges on steel rail. Exhilirating.

Let's go chase a train. It's good for the soul.


The photo: We're westbound along Washington Highway 14 in February 1978, chasing a Burlington Northern train through the Columbia River Gorge. This train was cooler than usual to chase, being powered up by a trio of exotic Alco locomotives.

Pictures from the Filing Cabinet: first of an (occasional) series

 Alco S-3 #36, built 1943, zips along the waterfront while switching just west of Union Station on May 28, 1978.

Though my main interest in scanning my 40 years of railroad photograph has concentrated on color transparencies, I recently decided I couldn't ignore the more than 600 rolls of black and white film stored in a four-drawer filing cabinet. While I'm quite familiar with what I'd shot in color, that wasn't the case with the black and whites. My opinion to what makes a "good photograph" has changed over the years. Frames I'd thought captured the moment 30 years ago sometimes fall flat to eyes that are now more discerning. And while my admittedly lackadaisical techniques in developing film often resulted in under developed rolls, digital film scanners are able to make very nice scans from frames that were a beast to manipulate in a wet darkroom. But the best part is discovering photos that I'd ignored all these years. I'll be sharing these in an occasional series.

Portland Terminal Railroad, 1978

It took me almost a year after moving to Seattle before I made my first trip to Portland, as part of a long-weekend trip searching for Burlington Northern Alcos with Stan Lytle in July of 1977. At that, Portland barely rated a quick look, a sprint down from the BN yard at Vancouver during rush hour to check out BN's Hoyt Street roundhouse on the west side of downtown hoping to find more Alcos and EMD F-units. Almost as an afterthought, we photographed action at the west end of Portland's Union Station, where Southern Pacific SD9's mingled with Alco switch engines wearing the no-nonsense grey paint of Portland Terminal Railroad.

PTR was a terminal railroad jointly owned by Union Pacific (40%), Southern Pacific (20%) and Burlington Northern (40%), which had inherited Northern Pacific's share of the operation following the 1970 BN merger. The railroad was originally named Northern Pacific Terminal, but changed to its present name in 1965. Its all-Alco locomotive roster once wore a snazzy purple and grey scheme, but by 1977, the locomotives resembled "undecorated" models in a bluish-grey paint. The railroad was based at the large Guild's Lake Yard between Willbridge and Union Depot, which kept busy originating and terminating trains of the parent railroad. A sprawling industrial backyard generated trainloads of traffic, keeping about a dozen little Alcos busy. The railroad extended as far east as the Steel Bridge and included the jointly-used passenger station.

I got a much better look at the PTR the following February, when I took a quick weekend trip to Portland hosted by Dave Nicoletti. Saturday was a very full day, chasing UP Centennials at 70mph up the Columbia gorge, watching big C636's depart Wishram, and chasing a short westbound back to Portland led by a C425. The day's photography concluded with night shots of idiling Alco switchers at PTR's Guild's Lake Yard, including the exotic T-6 #46. If that wasn't enough of a day, we went into the wee wee hours at a slide show populated by several talented Portland-area photographers.

I seem to recall a late morning wake-up, and we spent a good portion of what was left of the morning at Lake Yard, where PTR engineer "Wild Bill" Hunt invited us into the cab of rattling,wheezing Alco S-2 #37. It was likely the first time I'd been in an actual, living Alco switch engine, and Bill kept us entertained as he seamlessly transitioned between braking and power. I can't recall any of the conversation from 35 years ago, but I do remember Bill wearing Adidas tennis shoes rather than the expected steel shank boots.

That weekend in February 1978 was really the only attention I'd paid to PTR. Which is a shame, of course, because while the PTR continues in operation today, its identity has largely vanished. The fleet of Alcos were replaced in the mid-1980's by locomotives of the parent railroads, and much of the industrial spurs and factories of the near west side of Portland have been removed and the area redeveloped as the high-end "Pearl District," which also claimed the old Burlington Northern Hoyt Street yard and roundhouse.

Such is progress.

On my first visit to Portland on July 22, 1977, Alco S-4 #42 works along NW Naito Parkway as a Southern Pacific transfer train to Lake Yard powered by SD9's threads through the yard at Union Station. A Burlington Northern caboose still wearing the Big Sky Blue of Great Northern is on the right.

  At least five Alco switch engines congregate in the evening hours of February 18, 1978 at Guild's Lake Yard, PTR's operating headquarters.

 PTR #46 is a rare T-6 model Alco, equipped with a turbocharged 6 cylinder 251C power plant generating 1000 h.p. Only 57 of there were built, 40 of which went to Norfolk & Western. PTR's #46 and 47 were the only T-6's on the west coast.

Cab-end view of T-6 #46 beside the Guild's Lake Yard yard office. PTR sold the locomotive to Neptune Terminal of North Vancouver, B.C. in the mid-1980s.

 Bright and early the next morning, we returned to Guild's Lake Yard and were invited into the cab of 1937-built Alco S-2 #37 by engineer "Wild Bill" Hunt. 

 Engineer Bill kept up a running commentary about railroading, among other things, while constantly working the throttle and independent air valve.

 

 Strict adherence to safety footware rules apparently weren't enforced on the PTR back in 1978, as engineer Hunt was comfortable in his sporty tennis shoes.

 

 On a parallel track, S-2 $41 passes on an adjacent track.

Opening the Black & White Vaults. . .

 Grabbing orders, Milwaukee Road train #202, Kent, Washington. April 15, 1979

I've been asked to give a presentation about my now 40-years of railroad photography (that's a staggering amount of time when you apply it to someone else, and downright frightening when you're speaking about yourself!) to the annual "Conversations about Photography" conference by Center for Railroad Photography and Art director Scott Lothes.

You can read about the festivities here.

The May 16-18 conference at Lake Forest College on Chicago's north side will be the 11th such presentation, and I'm flattered (if a bit nervous) about the opportunity to talk about my work to the assembled artists, historians and others with an interest in the intersection of railroading and photography. The list of those who have presented in the past is quite impressive; I've always felt modestly about my work (though some of my acquaintance may not agree with that statement), and it is humbling to be lumped in with the likes of David Plowden, Dick Steinheimer, Don Sims, Ted Benson, John Gruber, Stan Kistler, Jeff Brouws--too many to list here, but suffice it to say that many, many among these have been my heroes and influences.

But the opportunity to present is a bit daunting, as this isn't the usual Winterail-type multi-media slide presentation of pretty photos set to music. What would I talk about? Can I tame my fear of public speaking? And how do I sift through 20,000 slides and 600+ rolls of black and white film to develop an overriding theme to the presentation. Scott figures I'd have time to present 50 or so photographs--my choosing--in a Q&A/discussion format with my photography friend and CRPA board member Mike Valentine. Thankfully, a lengthy interview and very nice article about my work by Scott for an upcoming issue of the CRPA's "Railroad Heritage" magazine has pointed me in the right direction.

So here's where the real work has started: weeding out the best of my black and white images to compliment my color work. I'm far more familiar with my color work, honestly, as it's been the focus of my on-going efforts to scan and catalog my work. The black and white negatives, though, are largely a mystery to me.

Since losing access to a wet darkroom when I left the photojournalism profession in 1994, the negs have largely sat in plastic totes, moved from location to location. Finally, I've gotten around to organizing them and beginning to reacquaint myself with what I'd shot.

And, to be honest, there's some pretty cool stuff in there--photos I'd either forgotten about or had passed over when I'd originally edited them in favor of images that I may have liked better back then. Some didn't initially make the cut because my criteria for what makes a "great" photo was different in 1981 than it is today. And some I didn't bother printing because at times my darkroom skills in processing film was a bit, um, lazy. And that resulted in some rolls that were either over or under developed. The earliest years of the work is especially fun, as a I shot a LOT of film and wasn't afraid to fail at trying something new; 1978 was an especially prolific year.

I was good at wet darkroom printing, but I hated it--the tedious hours, the smell of Kodak Rapid Fix that attached itself to everything. But I do love the digital darkroom, and aside from lack of smelly chemicals, one of the best things about it is that many of those thin, under-developed negatives that no way could I get a good print from are now magically transformed by Minolta Scanner, Vue Scan software, and Lightoom/Photoshop editing programs into some really nice images.

I'll be sharing some of these heretofore forgotten frames in the upcoming months. They've brought back lots of great memories, and really knocked me over the head once again with how much railroading has changed.

I hope you enjoy them!



Photo above: It's Easter Sunday, April 15, 1979, and Milwaukee Road train #202 has finished setting out a GP9 for service on the "Valley Owl" local at Kent, Washington. On the move eastbound, conductor Swanie Goulbic leans out from the caboose to snag a set of train orders strung up in the stand outside the depot. This railroader is obviously a veteran, and has learned his lesson in the past that it's better to grab the orders using a rolled up flag and wooden dowel, rather than take a chance smashing his hand on the wooden train order fork.