Capturing the disappearing aspects of American life is photographer David Plowden’s stock in trade. He proudly relates that his first published photograph appeared in TRAINS magazine a year before he graduated from Yale with an economics degree. After photographing locomotives and other aspects of railroading in the early 1960s, he turned his camera to depots, […]
Magazine: Classic Trains
David W. Salter
David W. Salter’s natural curiosity took him trackside throughout the South in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, photographing railroads in both color and black-and-white. Photography took a back seat when he was drafted into the Navy in 1950, and bounced to places as far-flung as Boston and Seattle, but Salter returned to his hobby after […]
Henry R. Griffiths, Jr.
Born and raised in Boise, Idaho, Henry Griffiths, Jr., produced an extensive, high-quality photographic record of railroading in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. Griffiths began photographing in the 1930s. Among his successes was a 1952 photo essay commissioned by True magazine of Union Pacific’s operations west from Cheyenne, Wyo. After a career […]
J. Parker Lamb
It’s quiet at the depot in Raleigh, N.C., as a pair of FT diesels does some switching on an evening in October 1962. J. Parker Lamb Equally adept at both color and black-and-white, J. Parker Lamb has been taking photos since the fall of 1949 when he was in the eleventh grade. A native of […]
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 […]
Link’s sounds of steam
N&W K1 4-8-2 104 is serviced at Bristol, Va. O. Winston Link Master photographer O. Winston Link, who died on January 30, 2001, at age 86, attained wide acclaim for his striking night views of Norfolk & Western steam locomotives. Indeed, no other photographer achieved greater fame for his railroad work than Link did. But […]
O. Winston Link
Terry Friend and Minnie Tate pose with Norfolk & Western Train 42 in a spoof of a famous 1875 advertising poster. O.Winston Link N&W K1 4-8-2 104 is serviced at Bristol, Va. O. Winston Link Master photographer O. Winston Link attained critical acclaim in the fine-art world for his striking nighttime views of the last […]
O. Winston Link Museum opens
Visitors gather in the main gallery of the new O. Winston Link Museum during its grand opening ceremony on January 10, 2004. Robert S. McGonigal In Roanoke, Va., an estimated 1000 people attended grand opening ceremonies for the O. Winston Link Museum on Saturday, January 10, 2004. The museum, located in the former Norfolk & […]
Richard H. Kindig
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 […]
Richard Jay Solomon
Photography and train travel are twin passions of Richard Jay Solomon, who was given his own 35mm camera for his 10th birthday. In the 1950s and 1960s, Solomon began capturing the last of steam on roads like the Pennsylvania and Norfolk & Western, and he took equal delight in photographing the Northeast’s colorful streetcar, transit, […]
Robert A. Hadley
From his home turf in Michigan and the Upper Midwest, Robert A. Hadley documented the transition from steam to diesel on American railroads. While Hadley often used conventional angles in his photographs, unlike other photographers he would step back and take in more of the scene, using generous foregrounds and backgrounds to demonstrate that the […]
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 […]