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Galt Coal Burns All Night 

The Great Falls & Canada Railway

 

AR&CC locomotive #13 at Shelby Junction (Virden, Montana) in the winter of 1897. This locomotive was originally North-West Coal & Navigation Company (NWC&NC) #1. From left; Fireman A. Niven and Engineer T. Nolan. Photo courtesy Glenbow Archives NA-1167-11

In time, the Lethbridge (Alberta district, Northwest Territories) coal mines would feed all the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) steam locomotives in western Canada, as well as the stoves of its stations and many settler prairie homes. The slogan “Galt Coal Burns All Night” was emblazoned on signage wherever it was sold; lumber yards, grain elevators, and farm cooperatives. By 1890, the North-West Coal & Navigation Company (NWC&NC) averaged 90,000 tons delivered per year to Dunmore, and the CPR wanted more. Northwest Mounted Police Superintendent Deane reported the Galt mines could produce more than 1,000 tons per day – with the possibilities for more in sight.

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Twenty-Two Hundred Miles
  and Counting

Part Two
Union Switch & Signal searchlights are mounted on the Santa Fe era cantilever at Verona, Illinois.

Early on a cold February morning in 2016, I left Topeka, Kansas for Prairie Village; a suburb of Kansas City. I was picking up my Mom and brother to continue my effort to photograph as many of the “old signals” as could be found. On most Class 1 railroads in the country, PTC is quickly taking over and I made it a priority to head east and document a few of the remaining color position lights, cantilever searchlights, and tri-lights before they were gone forever. This would be a continuation of the trip I took in August to photograph the last semaphores in New Mexico, and, as with that trip, the evidence that the end is near for the “old signals” was a constant on most of the journey.

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Editor’s Notebook

Work in Progress

Grade Crossing at Limeton, Virginia

That “killer” image that we all look for is sometimes not enough. To tell a story, go deeper into a subject or come to terms with an idea or emotion that cannot be expressed in a single image, we may need to undertake a multiple image project.

Sometimes projects come together after the fact when we find among our images relationships that we didn’t see at the time we made the shot. Sometimes projects are very intentional, involving research, shot lists, perhaps even a storyboard. Last month I mentioned David duChemin and his concept of using the camera as a tool of exploration, and I recommend his current video podcasts where he expands this idea in relation to personal projects. Simply put, David’s advice is to get an idea that interests you and is not too broad, and begin exploring that concept visually with a camera. Read more

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The New River Gorge

Part Three

Read The New River Gorge Part One here and Part Two here

The New River Gorge Bridge as seen from Bridge Buttress

In Part Two, we had just begun to explore Fayette Station, West Virginia.  Here Route 82 (one way from the north side of the Gorge and back up the other side) descends the mountain to the river then back up along the south side.  Before the New River Gorge Bridge was built, Route 82 was how the Gorge was crossed at this location.  At that time it was two way but for years now it has been limited to one way traffic.

Fayette Station is a busy place during the warm months.  It is a center of activity for raft take-outs, rock climbing, viewing the bridge and for several waterfalls which are within walking distance.  It also has a great rail fan location which I’ll get to later. Read more

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New Life for an Old Station

A bit of the new and a bit of the old at Denver Union Station. The graceful curves of the new canopy frame the old Beaux Arts structure as Amtrak Train #6, the eastbound California Zephyr, arrives on March 8th, 2015.

Denver’s Union Station has been a fixture in the Mile High City for more than a century. The dominant Beaux Arts portion of the building dates to 1914. In the early 2000’s the station became the centerpiece of a transportation themed urban redevelopment known as FasTracks. I moved to Denver in 2001 and lived there until I moved 2 hours south to Pueblo in April of 2016. As such, I was witness to the evolution of a relic from a bygone era into a re-imagined hub of transportation activity.

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The Track Comes First

Stations: An Imagined Journey
The cover of Michael Flanagan’s Stations features his painting “Chalybeate Springs,” based on a Charles Rotkin photograph taken on the Central Railroad of New Jersey in High Bridge, New Jersey that appeared in a 1972 Fortune magazine essay on eastern U.S. railroads.

In the summer of 1992 I attended an industrial archaeology field school at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia and spent my free time investigating railroad action around Martinsburg, Winchester and the surrounding Shenandoah Valley. Two years later, my annual Christmas stocking-stuffer book was Michael Flanagan’s illustrated novel of railroad paintings, Stations: An Imagined Journey which to my surprise was set in the same geographic area.  I was immediately drawn to the paintings, many of which looked like familiar places.  The narrative seemed cryptic on the first reading.  But I kept returning to the book, which eventually led me on my own journey, a personal exploration that rewarded me with a deeper understanding of my attraction to the railroad landscape.

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