Unlike most industries with a footprint measured in square feet, or perhaps several acres, the railroad reaches out into the American landscape to touch lonely rural outposts, big cities, and small towns. The railroad pushes over mountains and through uninhabited deserts. It spans rivers and streams as it stitches the country together with steel rails. And every place the railroad touches is changed by it, and the railroad is altered by each place it passes through.
The Center for Railroad Photography & Art has announced the publication of a new book, The Railroad and the Art of Place An Anthology. Featuring the work of twenty-five contemporary photographers as well as a selection of historic photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries, the book is a rich and evocative exploration of the railroad’s impact on the visual and cultural landscape of America.
This book is inspired by and expands upon the theme introduced by David Kahler in his earlier work, The Railroad and the Art of Place, which we reviewed in 2016 and you can read here.
This video is a recording of a panel discussion that presents an overview of the book including a selection of images and a discussion of the concepts that underlies the “art of place” and how these ideas shaped the work. I was honored to have a small role in the creation of the book and to be included among the panelists.
The Railroad and the Art of Place An Anthology is available for pre-order (click here) and will begin shipping on November 1st.
Larry McMurtry, the American author who wrote so eloquently about the changing West, died on March 25, 2021, at the age of eighty-four. He is perhaps best known for the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove, but he published both fiction and non-fiction over a long and prolific career. From his first novel, Horseman Pass By, here is a beautiful and evocative description of a warm evening on a Texas ranch, sitting on the porch watching the train go by as the day fades.
“Granddad was an old man then, and he worked hard days. By eight or eight-fifteen he was tired of sitting up. Around that time the nightly Zephyr flew by, blowing its loud whistle to warn the station men in Thalia. The noise cut across the dark prairie like the whistling train itself. I could see the hundred lighted windows of the passenger cars, and I wondered where in the world the people behind them were going night after night. To me it was exciting to think about a train. But the Zephyr blowing by seemed to make Granddad tireder; it seemed to make him sad. He told me one time that it reminded him of nights on roundup, long years ago. On quiet nights he and the other cowboys would sit around the fires, telling stories or drawing brands in the dirt. Some nights they would camp close to a railroad track, and a train would go by and blow its whistle at the fires. Sometimes it scared the cattle, and sometimes it didn’t, but it always took the spirit out of the cowboys’ talk; made them lonesomer than they could say. It made them think about womenfolk and fun and city lights till they could barely stand it. And long years after, when the last train would go by, Granddad got restless. He would stretch, and push his old rope-bottom chair up against the house. ‘Train’s gone, son,’ he said to me. ‘It’s bedtime.‘”
It’s been almost a year since we added a video to The Trackside Photographer’s YouTube channel, but we have a new video up and I hope you will take a minute to view it. It is a brief (less than five minutes) contemplation of the remains of Southern and Baltimore & Ohio railroads in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Strasburg Junction was once the hub of rail activity in the Valley, but is a ghost of its former self.
If you like this video, please give it a thumbs-up, and consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. We don’t upload new videos very often, but if you subscribe, at least you will know when we do.
And a Book
If you live near the Shenandoah Valley, or find yourself railfanning there, this book is highly recommended. Bob Cohen travels station by station down the Baltimore & Ohio from Brunswick, Maryland to Strasburg, Virginia and then follows the Southern Railway from Strasburg to Lexington, Virginia. Along the way, he tells about the history of each stop and provides historic photos of the stations, people and track structures. He also includes a listing of known Station Agents at each depot. I am indebted to Bob for the history of Strasburg Junction included in the video.
A Trip by Rail in the Shenandoah Valley is available at Ron’s Books.
Over the next several months, I want to talk about books. I have some thoughts about photo books in general, and also wish to share with you some favorite books that have inspired my own photography. Books are the perfect showcase for photography.
David Plowden has spend decades photographing the vanishing remnants of America’s rich past with a poet’s eye. Although Plowden is perhaps best know for his railroad photography, he has published over twenty books on everything from bridges, to barns, to tugboats; things that were once a familiar part of the American landscape. Published in 2007, Vanishing Point: Fifty Years of Photography is a perfect summation of his life’s work and is a highly recommended introduction to Plowden’s vision.
Carleton E. Watkins Cape Horn near Celilo, Columbia River, 1867 Oregon Historical Society
After Promontory: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Transcontinental Railroading was put together by the Center for Railroad Photography & Artand published by Indiana University Press. With the sesquicentennial of the Golden Spike looming, the creators of this book chose this time to look back not only at the Pacific Railroad, but also the subsequent transcontinental railroads, and the myriad ramifications of the industry, writ large, since Stanford wielded the maul on May 10th 1869 at Promontory Summit.
After Promontory begins with a forward by Robert D. Krebs, former Chairman, President, and CEO for BNSF Railway, which lays out the structure of the book, followed by an introduction by H. Roger Grant, historian at Clemson University. Grant provides us with a concise history leading up to the first transcontinental road, later known as the Overland Route, including Asa Whitney’s dream as well as the concrete, and prescient, results of the Pacific Railroad Surveys of 1853. He pivots nicely to how photography functioned as a marketing tool for all of the eventual railroads that made it deep into the West. Established railroad historians Keith L. Bryant, Don L. Hofsommer, and Maury Klein provide the book’s major essays—the reader may recognize these names from their own dog-eared histories of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the Union Pacific Railroad respectively. Drake Hokanson, a photographer/writer who has covered the original route of the first transcontinental railroad extensively, penned the final essay, with a focus on the symbiotic relationship of railroads and photography in the 19th century, and he supplied many images as well. Peter A. Hansen, steward of the journal Railroad History, performed editing duties. (It should be noted that I contributed nine photographs to this volume—five large plates and four small illustrative vignettes.)
