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Live Steam!

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the 42d Annual Steam & Gas Pasture Party in Somerset, Virginia. This event is hosted each year by the Somerset Steam & Gas Engine Association. Now, I know that this is not exactly a railroad thing, but if you are interested in steam railroading,  experiencing some of the 19th century steam technology that grew up with the railroads will be of interest. This nine-minute video will give you a brief tour of the steam shed, a sawmill powered by a steam tractor, steam plowing demonstrations and more.

From massive steam powered tractors to small stationary steam engines, all are in steam and operating during the three days of the show. It’s a taste of the way things were over 100 years ago, when steam not only powered the railroad, but found widespread application in industry and agriculture.

Edd Fuller, Editor

This video is the latest addition to The Trackside Photographer's 
YouTube Channel

 

 

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The Ticket Agent’s Last Day

The former Santa Fe Depot at Topeka, KS. at 5:00 am. The lights are still on, but no one works here anymore. The last ticket agent at the depot saw his last train depart on May 19, 2018

By 1880, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway had an operating depot in the City of Topeka, Kansas. For roughly the next 120 years, that depot was manned daily by a ticket agent until Amtrak went to a five day work week for the agent. During the days when the Santa Fe operated the depot, trains like the California Limited, Grand Canyon, Antelope, Kansas Cityan, and Scout all made stops at Topeka, along with many nameless trains known only by a number. The number of trains would decrease in the years leading up to the inception of Amtrak. When Amtrak began operating over the Santa Fe, trains like the Super Chief, El Capitan, and Texas Chief all made stops in Topeka during the early years of Amtrak Service.

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“I photographed what I saw”

Jim Shaughnessy

Railroad Photographer
1933 – 2018

Photograph Copyright 2018 by Tom Nanos

In 1959, a third grade boy borrowed a train book from the school library and sat down to enjoy it in the school cafeteria. Soon special pictures filled his imagination.

There was a nocturnal image of the 1852 train shed in St. Albans, Vermont, displaying a immense Central Vermont Mountain locomotive . . . Read more

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Editor’s Notebook

East Broad Top Railroad – Photograph Copyright 2018 by Edd Fuller

Saving Our Past

 
I have been thinking about the role of photography in historic preservation lately.

This summer, plans were announced to widen the intersection in a crossroads town here in the county where I live. The change will require the destruction of an old wooden store building, and it is the last vestige of the town as it once was. After the “improvements” are completed, there will be nothing left but a post office, and a four-lane highway lined with fast food restaurants and gas stations. Read more

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Blowing the Past Away

I was driving down Highway 4, between Rosetown and Swift Current, Saskatchewan, when I saw the old abandoned wood crib elevator in a farmer’s field just off the highway. How, I wondered, did it come to be there, all alone?

As it turns out, the elevator was once on a railway line—the old Canadian Pacific Railway McMorran Subdivision. Built in 1923, it was one of at least two elevators in the hamlet of Thrasher. But on this summer day in 2015, there is only one elevator left, abandoned like the rail line, and like Thrasher itself. Read more

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Fallen Flags Still Flying (By) . . .

. . . But catch them while you can

Call it the impact of the homogenization of American railroading, but it’s been easy to get a little jaded or even bored standing at trackside lately. Another set of all-black & white NS “Thoroughbreds” or armour-yellow Union Pacific locomotives rolling by with a roar and maybe a friendly whistle blast from the engineer.

That describes a day last summer, when yet another otherwise nondescript freight train rolled by me at one of my favorite Columbus, Ohio viewing spots. And then, amid a string of grain hoppers with reporting marks I didn’t recognize, bland paint and no other markings, one car stood out and left me picking my jaw off the ground. Read more