Legendary West Coast photographer Stan Kistler dies at 91

When the prolific and influential California photographer Stan Kistler won the Railway & Locomotive Society’s prestigious Fred A. and Jane R. Stindt Photography Award in 1996, he earned what might be considered the ultimate citation for a photographer: “He has not only documented the railroads of the West, but crafted beautiful images that will last as long as railroads and their history endure.”

Kistler’s many admirers are echoing that sentiment with the news of his death on Sept. 29 at age 91. As Scott Inman of the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society put it on Facebook, “Stan leaves us with major shoes to fill, as he was one of the last living photographers of the ‘golden age’ of railroading.”

Born Nov. 26, 1930, Kistler grew up in San Diego and Pasadena and at age 12 in 1943 took his first railroad pictures, appropriately of steam and early diesel locomotives on the Santa Fe, a railroad with which he would have a lifelong association.

His first published photograph appeared in the November 1951 issue of Trains, showing a Railway Club of Southern California excursion on the Apache Railroad pulled by a Fairbanks Morse H10-44 diesel and a 2-8-2. His first Trains byline came in April 1960 with “Loggers and Lokeys,” a profile of Rayonier logging operations in Washington.

Photography was also Kistler’s profession. He worked in graphics for 13 years at the Pasadena-based California Institute of Technology and later for the Grass Valley Group, a manufacturer of television and broadcast equipment that, for a time, was affiliated with Tektronix, maker of electronic testing and measurement devices.

Kistler continued to pursue railroad photography throughout his professional career, contributing frequently to a variety of rail enthusiast publications, as well as making appearances at railfan photography events such as the annual Winterail exposition, held for many years in Stockton, Calif., and now in Corvallis, Ore. In addition to the R&LHS photography award, Kistler was named to the Winterail Hall of Fame in 2000.

One person who knew Kistler well and worked closely with him in recent months is Elrond Lawrence, acquisitions and marketing coordinator for the Madison-based Center for Railroad Photograph & Art (CRPA). Lawrence oversaw the transfer of Kistler’s color archive to the Center and is currently working on securing the photographer’s Santa Fe black-and-white negatives.

“As a teenage Southern California railfan in the 1980s, I found it impossible to say ‘Santa Fe’ without thinking of Stan,” says Lawrence. “His legendary action photographs of AT&SF steam and streamliners were synonymous with my favorite railroad, and his immaculate images set the gold standard for beautiful and iconic rail photography. He is one of the true giants of Western rail photographers and he helped shape the Santa Fe mystique for generations of fans.”

Lawrence emphasizes that Kistler’s talents extended beyond black-and-white photography. Beginning in 1953 he shot in color as well, with predictably excellent results.

“It was after joining the Center staff that I fully realized the scope, variety, and creativity of his work, especially in color,” Lawrence explains. “His noir pictures of Warbonnet diesels and streamlined trains at twilight arriving and departing L.A. Union Station are next-level in their haunting beauty.” Several of those Los Angeles images appeared in the December 1989 issue of Trains Illustrated under the headline “In the Summer of ‘’62: L.A. Nights.”

Kistler also created audio recordings and occasional 16mm films. Produced under his own S.K. Railroad Recordings label, he released several LPs in the late 1950s and early ’60s, among them “Whistles in the Woods,” an anthology of logging railroads such as West Side and Rayonier, and “Night Freight,” recorded in 1960 in the cab of a Nacionales de México 4-8-4. Lawrence reports that Kistler’s sound recordings also are headed to the CRPA for preservation.

Kistler also has his byline on two books. The first, “Santa Fe: Steel Rails Through California,” was co-authored with Don Duke and published by Duke’s Golden West Books in 1963. In 2009, the Santa Fe society published “Stan Kistler’s Santa Fe in Black and White,” a deluxe black-and-white showcase of some of Kistler’s best work. Other credits for Kistler include founding member in 1953 of the Southern California Chapter of the R&LHS, and later director of the R&LHS Pacific Coast Chapter.

Kistler’s enthusiasm for the railroad game was boundless, and he had a gift for depicting it in words. Consider this description of a 1948 fan trip behind a Santa Fe 4-8-4, taken from a story he wrote for the July 1981 issue of Trains, about California fan trip impresario John Markoe Ferris.

Wrote Kistler: “This was the end of a perfect day, heading back from Barstow into a setting sun, the huge 80-inch drivers of Baldwin 4-8-4 3780 biting into the 0.9-to-1.5 percent grades near Hesperia, siderods flashing in the dwindling light, the mountains outlined by haze, the smell of oil smoke and valve oil drifting back, the sounds of the perfectly timed exhaust from the stack (with each beat chopped evenly) and wheel clicks over rail joints . . .”

Kistler was married to his wife, Brenda Kay Kistler, for 56 years; she died June 29, just three months before his passing. He is survived by two daughters, Rene Hardrath and Erinn Cooke, and two grandchildren.

A photo gallery of Kistler photos from the Winter 2014 Classic Trains is available here.