Trains Photograpy

CB&Q photo

Streamliner vs. winter

Burlington Route's pioneering Twin Cities Zephyr streamliner bursts through a snowdrift in Lee, Ill., in 1936. CB&Q photo; Classic Trains collection.

Santa Fe photo

Putting a shine on the warbonnet

The washrack at Santa Fe's shop in Argentine, Kans., gives an F7 diesel a fresh look. Santa Fe photo; Classic Trains collection.

Photo by Wally Abbey

Rush hour in the Windy City

Steam still rules at North Western Station as commuter trains line up for Chicago's evening rush in 1952. In the background is the diesel-powered "Peninsula 400." Photo by Wally Abbey; Classic Trains collection.

C&O photo

Boxcar empire

The heyday of the boxcar is evident in this view of a Chesapeake & Ohio freight heading east from Cincinnati. C&O photo; Classic Trains collection

GN photo

Great Northern's finest

The "Empire Builder" rolls along Puget Sound between Seattle and Everett, Wash. GN photo; Classic Trains collection.

Santa Fe photo

New look for the Super

Santa Fe's Chicago-Los Angeles "Super Chief" boasts new E1 diesels in a 1944 publicity photograph. Santa Fe photo; Classic Trains collection.

C&NW photo

Overland flyer

The new streamliner "City of Denver," jointly operated by Union Pacific and Chicago & North Western, rumbles into Chicago's North Western Station in 1936. C&NW photo; Classic Trains collection.

Photo by Wally Abbey

Cincinnati all-stars

E-unit diesels of Chesapeake & Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York Central line up at Cincinnati Union Terminal in 1952. Photo by Wally Abbey; Classic Trains collection.

Photo by Wally Abbey

Maple Leaf monarch

Grand Trunk Western's morning "Maple Leaf" to Toronto departs Chicago's Dearborn Station behind one of the railroad's streamlined 4-8-4's. Photo by Wally Abbey; Classic Trains collection.

Photo by Warren McGee

Northern Pacific 4-8-4 No. 2662 storms up the 1.8 percent grade at Muir, Mont., in 1947.

Few people know the railroads of Montana like Warren McGee, who has been photographing them since 1930. McGee's favorite subject is the Northern Pacific, the railroad that also employed him for 35 years as a brakeman and conductor, based in the NP shop town of Livingston, Mont. McGee was drafted in the Army during World War II, assigned to photo reconnaissance. Back in Montana, he resumed his railroad career, but also landed free-lance photography assignments for Northern Pacific and Great Northern, creating photos used in advertising. NP even paid for a camera McGee could use while taking other company photographs. "I like a train, a steam engine that is well painted and well maintained. It's a picture of power to me," McGee tells Classic Trains magazine in its Fall 2003 issue. When not working, McGee scoured the mountains, canyons, and river bottoms of Montana, capturing images of the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Milwaukee Road during the mid-twentieth century. McGee has donated his vast collection of photographs to the Montana Historical Society.

Photo by Bruce Meyer

Norfolk & Western Y6-Class 2-8-8-2 No. 2136 thunders east near Delbarton, W.Va., with a coal train on March 25, 1959.(Bruce R. Meyer)

Bruce Meyer has been on a search for steam since he started taking railroad photographs in the early 1950s. Meyer made a dramatic record of steam's final years in the Midwest and eastern U.S., and recalls countless visits to the Illinois Central, Pennsylvania Railroad, Norfolk & Western, Baltimore & Ohio, Nickel Plate, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific. As the fires of main-line steam locomotives were dropped, Meyer turned his attention to U.S. fan trips and steam operations overseas in locales such as China, Eastern Europe, and India. Equally dramatic are Meyer's close-up views of locomotives. He made about half his photos for modeling purposes and the other half for his own enjoyment. "We just started taking pictures from any angle, doing what we thought was interesting and what might be required to build better models," Meyer told Classic Trains magazine in its Spring 2003 issue. "I take a lot of detail pictures because railroad erection drawings do not show all the details." An electrical engineer who enjoyed a 40-year career at GM's Electro-Motive Division, Meyer doesn't see anything incongruous about working a new diesel-electrical units but taking photographs of steam.

Photo by Jim Shaughnessy

On a cold night in Sherbrooke, Que., in February 1957, the engineer of Canadian National 4-6-2 No. 5293 admires his steed.(Jim Shaughnessy photo; TRAINS collection.)

By day and by night, in color and black-and-white, and on railroads big and small, Jim Shaughnessy has produced a vivid record of the railroad and its environment. Though perhaps best known for early night photography, shots of people in roundhouses and shops, and books on the Delaware & Hudson and Rutland railroads, Shaughnessy remains an active railroad photographer today. He began taking photographs in the late 1940s, capturing the end of steam in the northeast U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and continued photographing the first and second-generation diesels that followed in New England and throughout the U.S. A civil engineer by trade, Shaughnessy has helped people with dozens of books, starting with Lucius Beebe, setting the pace for the field as we know it today. He was honored for his work by the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society, which in 1987 presented him with its lifetime achievement award in photography. "I like pictures with people in them or something, not contrived, that capture a moment in time," Shaughnessy tells Classic Trains magazine in its Fall 2001 issue. "There is more to it than just the locomotive. The station scenes, the countryside, umpteen million possibilities.

Photo by Stan Kistler

A Union Pacific 2-10-2 helps a four-unit Alco FA diesel roll a westbound freight up Cajon Pass near Victorville, Calif., in October 1950. (Stan Kistler)

Stan Kistler is a well-known professional photographer and photofinisher in Grass Valley, Calif. Kistler began photographing trains in the early 1940s when he was growing up in Pasadena, documenting the Southern California railroad scene with roll-film and Speed Graphic cameras, supported only by public transportation and the limited income of a teenager. Kistler's passion became a profession, and he later spent 13 years at Caltech before joining the Grass Valley Group and establishing his own photo business. His book Santa Fe Steel Rails through California was published in 1963. Kistler received the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society's award for photography in 1996. "It was an exciting period to be trackside," Kistler wrote in the Spring 2000 issue of Classic Trains magazine, commenting on the photographs he made in the 1940s and '50s. "I was privileged to be a railfan and a spectator to this era of Southern California rail history.

Photo by Richard H. Kindig

Richard H. Kindig Big Boy Big Boy 4012 starts down the west side of Sherman Hill in June 1949. Cars of livestock are coupled right behind the tender. (Richard H. Kindig)

Richard H. Kindig is best known for his magnificent views of steam locomotives laboring in the mountain passes of the West in the 1930s and 1940s. With his trademark postcard Graflex camera, Kindig photographed the main-line Rocky Mountain action of the Union Pacific, Denver & Rio Grande Western, and Santa Fe, as well as vanishing narrow-gauge pikes such as the Rio Grande Southern and Colorado & Southern. Kindig received the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society's award for photography in 1984, and has the distinction of having a photo published in the first issue of TRAINS magazine, November 1940. "Photography was a totally different approach to the railroads