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Things Unsaid

Grand Central Concourse No 2, 1997

I

Railroad architecture isn’t only stones and cement, iron and steel, vertical elevations and so on. It’s also the spirit, or as we may say, the ‘atmosphere’ of the place. And equally, it’s the culture of the lives that have used it.

If therefore you wanted to know more about major railroad stations with a long history, you could do worse than listen to the opening clip from a radio program called Grand Central Station. The program was sponsored by the Pillsbury Flour company and it aired until 1954. Every week, the listener was drawn into a world where the railroad and the station building intersected with human life.

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Spur Line

The Indigenous people who lived and thrived on the lakeshore called it Ha-AH-chu, meaning Little Lake. That name is remembered today by a vanishingly small number of speakers of the Duwamish language, Lushootseed. To the settlers and builders who supplanted the first people, it became, and still is, Lake Union. To railroaders, it was Region 4 of the Seattle Division. While that name is lost to time, a work of art remembers lakeshore life and the railroading that once was done there.

From nearly its earliest days, Seattle has been a railroad town. Locally mined coal, locally felled timber, locally produced cedar shingles, and silk fabrics imported from Asia by clipper ship were among the many products that transited the growing metropolis. War and economic boomtimes grew the railroads while economic busts, competitive modes of transportation and, most recently, gentrification have caused the presence of trains to shrink and become virtually invisible.

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Living History: Dispatchers

In the effort to preserve railroad history, our efforts are most often focused on the physical aspects of the railroad and its infrastructure. But another, and sometimes neglected, element of history lives in the memories of those railroaders who lived that history as part of their day-to-day job.

In this episode of Legacies: Living History, we talk with three retired train dispatchers for an insider’s look at the job of the dispatcher, the ups and downs of day to day railroad operations, and some memorable stories that took place over the span of nearly 50 years.

Edd Fuller, Editor

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Editor’s Notebook

Haystacks

Claude Monet – Haystack

You may be wondering what haystacks have to do with railroads and photography. I am going to get to that, but first let me explain how I think that looking at a wide variety of art and artists can bring new ideas and spark creativity in our own work. As photographers, we often become mildly obsessed with the latest gear and techniques that promise to “level up” our photography.

There is nothing wrong with gear and technique. They are essential to our craft, but they are only part of the picture. As we educate ourselves about the craft of photography, we must not neglect to train our eyes. We can do that not only by studying the work of other photographers, but also by looking at and learning from all the visual arts. Stepping outside the world of railroad photography, our visual sensibility is enhanced when we see the world through the eyes of artists working in different media. I love to look at and study the work of the great railroad photographers, but I also explore and learn from the work of “non-railroad” photographers and other visual artists. Learning to see is a lifelong journey.

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Talking Pictures – Episode 5

History, the natural and man-made landscape, photography, and the railroad all come together in the work of photographer Michael Froio. In this episode of Talking Pictures, we discuss Michael’s photography, his on-going projects and his unique approach to railroad photography through the lens of time and place.

Talking Pictures is an ongoing series of video podcasts. Focusing on the images, each episode features photographers and artist discussing their own work, or images that they find inspirational or meaningful.

Join us, and if you like what you see, give the video a “thumbs up” (it helps spread the word) and share your thoughts in the comments.

Edd Fuller, Editor

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The Drop

Back in 1970, we still had the sixteen-hour law and many freight jobs out of New Haven Connecticut, would work 15:59 so they did not outlaw. If you worked sixteen hours you had to have ten hours rest. But any other amount of time meant you only had to have eight hours off. Any job that went into New York had to have a fireman on it as they still had a full crew law; this was the way it was until about the 80’s. One of the jobs that went to New York was NH-1 that turned for HN-2. It was called the Drop as it made many stops along the way. The engineer on the job at that time was Joe De Cuffa, who was another great guy to work with and knew his job well. He enjoyed having firemen to teach and was the first engineer that started teaching me how to run a freight train. Before 1974, to become an engineer you were a firemen for a while, as a rule about three to four years. During that time you worked with many men and most would have you sit in the seat and show you how they ran their train. At the end of your years of doing it that way you took exams on rules, air brake, mechanical aspects of the engines and then qualifying on the characteristics of the road. That last part was where you sat with the rules examiner and he would take you from a point some place on the section of track you were doing to another part until he was satisfied you knew where you were. This meant each signal, switch, station, interlocking, speeds and any other special instruction you would have to know.

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