Wallace W. Abbey

Biography

Wallace W. “Wally” Abbey (1927–2014) belongs to a rare species of railroad photographers: those who have a full understanding of all aspects of railroading, coupled with the knowledge of how to present visual ideas in a manner that excites the railroad community and the general public alike. In Wally Abbey’s creative and comprehensive views, we see people at work, travelers on luxury trains, interiors of cars, workers in the shop and on the track, and trains in many of their varied habitats. A $10,000 preservation grant from Trains is helping to make his approximately 35,000 photographs fully available for research and further publication.

True to his Midwestern roots, Abbey shunned boastfulness, but he took justifiable pride in his work, enough pride to have assembled “Favorites” in 2004—25 black-and-white photographs hand-picked and captioned for his own enjoyment. “Favorites” is an excellent selection of images from the late 1940s and early 1950s, showing his wide-ranging view of the railroad: big engines on the Santa Fe; “George,” the engineer on the Morning Zephyr; shop scenes at Beech Grove, Indiana, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Cumberland, Maryland; people relaxing in the lounge car of the Super Chief; passengers waiting for trains; and Oklahoma-Texas Fast Freight speeding past another freight train. His captions lament both the transition from steam to diesel and the transition from passenger train to airliners.

Wally Abbey got infected with a lifelong desire to photograph railroads while watching the Frisco and the Santa Fe trains crossing at Cherryvale, Kansas, where he visited his grandparents just before and during World War II. There he stood, waiting as all railroad photographers do, camera in hand when he could find film, sometimes a scarce commodity during wartime. He made his first picture in 1940, at age 13.

If he had a favorite railroad to photograph, it would be the Santa Fe, followed closely by the Chicago & North Western. A multi-talented person, he also is known for originating the Soo Line’s red-and-light gray color scheme of 1962.

Abbey kept his camera with him as a journalism student at the University of Kansas, associate editor at Trains, then through a succession of progressively more responsible jobs in the railroad industry, resulting in the Fred A. and Jane R. Stindt Photography Award from the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society in 2003. He passed away in January 2014, leaving his creative work for all of us to admire.

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Bibliography

The Trains index credits Abbey with 63 articles, 59 under the name Wallace W. and 4 under Wally. Fifteen were in a series, “Notable Feats of Railroad Engineering.” WorldCat, the worldwide online library catalog, lists 7 works in 7 publications in 1 language. It notes 119 library holdings, the most prominent being The Little Jewel: Soo Line Railroad Company and the Locomotives that Make it Go, a book self-published in 1984. It is held by 62 libraries worldwide.

For more about Abbey and his photography, see articles by John Gruber in Classic Trains, Summer 2010, pages 36-45; and Scott Lothes in Trains, August 2012, pages 42-47, and Classic Trains, Summer 2024, pages 48-53.

Extent
9.3 linear feet
9 binders
30,000+ images

Arrangement
The arrangement generally follows a chronological order. Over time, Abbey used three different numbering schemes; the Center renumbered the images using a single scheme.

Availability
All of Abbey’s black-and-white negatives have been digitized, and a selection is available online in the Center’s digital collections. The data for all of the negatives is displayed below. (Note: the search box is only for the table.)