Publisher of Railroad Heritage® / Creator of the Railroad Heritage.org® pictorial site

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Highlights

Photography Awards

Photo by Brandon Smith, 2010 winner.

As a part of its commitment to excellence, the Center has established annual national awards for outstanding contributions to railroad imagery. See the 2010 winners.

2009: A Landmark Year

It was a landmark year. The Center completed a major project, its Internet archive, railroadheritage.org, with publication of “North American Railroad History in a Nutshell.” Just as significantly, it saw Classic Steam: Timeless Photographs of North America Steam Railroading into print with the Center credited on the cover. While these were in their final stages, it eased energetically into a new initiative, Jack Delano’s “Portraits of Railroading.”

Activities throughout the year reflected our mission: “The Center is a nonprofit arts and educational organization that preserves and presents significant images of railroading, interpreting them in print, exhibitions, and on the Internet.”

We sponsored a great “Conversations about Photography” conference at Lake Forest College, published three issues of Railroad Heritage; recognized new, young, or relatively unknown railroad photographers.; contributed monthly columns to the Trains online newsletter, and started a Facebook page.

Publication of “Nutshell,” issue 21 of Railroad Heritage, constituted the final report of railroadheritage.org, a two-year project funded by the North American Railway Foundation of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

One of America’s leading young historians, Jeremi Suri, E. Gordon Fox Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found it valuable as a public resource and as an educational tool. He wrote: “I have enjoyed every page [of the Nutshell issue]! I have also shared it with a few colleagues, and my children! I am a deep railroad enthusiast. These beautiful machines are a central part of our nation's history, as well as its present. I look forward to reading more of your publications, and making use of them in my teaching and public lecturing.” Trains and Railfan & Railroad reviewed the issue favorably. As for the site of which Nutshell is a part, the Center continues to add photographs; the total on the site has reached 1,400.

We continue to elaborate on an earlier NARF-funded project, “Representations of Railroad Work,” both through railroadheritage.org and now the Delano project. Each emphasizes railroad workers in all aspects of railroading—passenger and freight trains, management and labor, station workers of all kinds—and its varied environments. Already, you can see thirty-six carefully described Delano photographs on the site.

Of the multitude of subjects captured on film by the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information’s remarkable team of photographers in the 1930s and 1940s, none illuminates the lives of those who worked in America’s heavy industries more than Jack Delano’s story of the nation’s railroads and its workers. Yet no major exhibition to date has explored the riches of Delano’s work for the content of its original intentions: the character and enormous variety of the work and workers that built and kept the country’s core industry, railroads, humming. The Center has a story about his work at Chicago Union Station in Railroad Heritage 22 and completed a careful survey of his body of FSA-OWI work.

Classic Steam, a 224-page, large format (12-1/2 in. by 12 in.) hardcover book, is a Barnes & Noble “bargain book,” selling for $19.98 in its bookstores and on its web site. It is elegantly printed in color and quadtones that provide depth and “snap” to the black-and-white photographs. John Gruber, president of the Center, compiled the volume; the foreword is by William L. Withuhn, curator of the Division of Work and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution. Gruber is donating a portion of the author’s fees to the Center. “Buy it, read it, love it,” Angela Pusztai-Pasternak said in a review in the February 2010 Trains.

The conference and awards program continue to be hands-on, personal-level membership benefits. Both have been growing each year, becoming nationally significant events in the world of railroad photography; no other similar programs serve this diverse community of photographers including new as well as veteran photographers. The 2009 awards program was the first all-digital contest. Co-sponsors, in addition to Lake Forest College, included Trains, Railfan & Railroad, and Canon.

In connection with its conference, the Center offered an opportunity to collect limited edition railroad photographs, featuring Jim Shaughnessy in 2009, and buy books signed by speakers. Both provide financial support for the Center's programs.

Its journal, Railroad Heritage, is a strong part of its communications program, complemented by this Internet site, railphoto-art.org, which averaged 310 visitors and almost 4,000 hits per day in 2009. We added the Facebook page on March 24, and by year’s end, 204 joined—an encouraging response. Regular e-mail blasts also provide information.

The Center is showing the work of new, young, or relatively unknown railroad photographers in monthly profiles posted on railphoto-art.org and railroadheritage.org. The first, 18-year-old Walter Scriptunas II of West Virginia, appeared in November; more will follow.

Another new Internet project, in cooperation with Trains, is the monthly column as a part of the online Trains Newsletter. The column, started in June, quickly became a popular feature of the Newsletter and attracts hits to the Center’s websites.

A gift from James M. Semon strengthened the Center’s archives. He provided negatives and photographs by Willis A. McCaleb (1919-96) of the Nickel Plate illustrating the every-day, bread-and-butter work of a company photographer.

Exhibitions continued. “Railroads and the American Industrial Landscape: Ted Rose Photographs” was at the O. Winston Link Museum, Roanoke, Virginia, January 26 to April 30; Gruber gave a gallery talk in March. “It's Work: 150 Years of Railroaders at Work,” a part of the Center’s first NARF project, was at the Great Overland Station, Topeka, Kansas, through May 1. “The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy,” including a March 15 presentation and book signing by Shaughnessy, closed at the California State Railroad Museum and reopens in 2010 at the O. Winston Link Museum, Roanoke, Virginia. “Beebe & Clegg on the Comstock” continues on in the main exhibit hall at the Comstock History Center in Virginia City through April 2010. “Railroad Photographs of O. Winston Link: The Last Steam Railroad in America,” organized by Thomas H. Garver and produced in collaboration with the Center, was at the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Museum of Art for seven weeks from August 7 to September 27. And finally, in cooperation with the Mid-Continent Railway Historical Society, the Center produced an exhibition at Mazomanie, Wisconsin, for the Gandy Dancer Festival in August.

The Center has three employees who together work the equivalent of about 60 hours a week—1.5 positions—Scott Lothes, Jack Holzhueter, and Maggie Albert. John Gruber draws no salary and works full time or more. Holzhueter’s contributions have been essential for the recent success of railroadheritage.org, Nutshell (which was Lothes’s idea), recent issues of the magazine, and the work so far on the Delano project. Gruber, Holzhueter, and Lothes worked together on the Classic Steam book. Albert keeps the books and membership lists up to date. She is a UW-Madison business student. Two volunteers, Hank Koshollek and Phil Hamilton (both nationally important professionals), contribute liberally of their talents, Hank to PhotoShop and Phil to all forms of design. Jeff Brouws, Greg McDonnell, and Art Miller work on the conference; Miller with David Mattoon also on the archives. From time to time we have hired persons for technical services of many sorts. The operation consists of a cooperative and talented paid and non-paid staff, and board members in various capacities.

A survey posted on our Internet site for a month showed widespread interest in the Center. Of 56 people answering the question, “Would you recommend the Center to others?” 55 (98 percent) said yes, they would. When asked why they support the Center, 56 of 59 people (95 percent) said, because of “its emphasis on railroad photography and art.” Other answers to the same question: “Its emphasis on educating the railroad community about railroad heritage,” 26 or 44 percent; “Its general support of the world of railroading,” 35 or 59 percent.

We thank those who have supported us in 2009 with gifts (PDF), memberships and participation in events—without them, this would not have been a landmark year.