Author Archives: Elrond Lawrence

Center unveils Odyssey, our new digital archive of railroad imagery

The sky’s the limit for fans of railroads and photography who can happily immerse themselves in Odyssey, the Center for Railroad Photography & Art’s new collections management system. Odyssey is live and available to explore at this link.

The online portal was selected in June 2022 by CRP&A staff members to house digitized images from its collections. Over the past year, our archives team has worked closely with the platform’s developers to customize and implement the software. Dynamic and user-friendly, Odyssey will facilitate higher cataloging standards among Center staff and greater public searchability of collection materials. Users can explore all of the Center’s images that are available in its Flickr galleries, but now collected in a single location — as well as new offerings from John Gruber, Stan Kistler, David Mainey, and Jim Shaughnessy, with more to come from Richard Steinheimer and many others.

“The Center’s archives and digitization efforts have grown tremendously over the past few years, and Odyssey’s large storage capacity limit offers opportunities for even further collection development,” said Adrienne Evans, director of archives and collections. “We recently finished migrating all of our digital collections from Flickr to Odyssey and we’re excited to introduce everybody to the new portal. Being a new system, we’ll constantly make improvements as we expand the galleries to include more images from our growing collections.”

“After a lengthy search and implementation process, we’re excited to begin sharing more of our collections through Odyssey,” said Scott Lothes, president and executive director. “Our collections team has digitized tens of thousands of photographs in the past couple of years alone. We have so much to share with you.”

We’re deeply grateful for the generosity of donors and members who have made it possible to reach this milestone, and we encourage everyone to make their own odyssey! A search guide is available here.

Please direct any questions or comments to info@railphoto-art.org; follow the Center on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates.

PHOTO: Sunset on Santa Fe’s Needles District in the Mojave Desert, summer 1976, looking west to Amboy, Calif. Richard Steinheimer photo, Steinheimer-Burman-AG-Temp005

All-star photographers to headline Rio Grande narrow gauge book

We’re thrilled to announce the Center for Railroad Photography & Art’s next hardcover book, Rio Grande Steam Finale, to be released October 1, 2023.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many of the nation’s greatest railroad photographers journeyed to southwestern Colorado and northern New Mexico to document the final years of the Denver & Rio Grande Western’s spectacular narrow-gauge railway. They were driven by a fever for which there was no cure: the chance to photograph half-century-old trains operating on rails spaced three feet apart, the last remnants of an empire.

Drawing from thousands of images of the Rio Grande narrow gauge in the Center’s archive, this book gathers the finest work on this rich subject by Tom Gildersleeve, John Gruber, Victor Hand, Don Hofsommer, Jim Shaughnessy, Fred Springer, Richard Steinheimer, and Karl Zimmermann. Inside Rio Grande Steam Finale you’ll find a stunning gallery of black & white and color images, lavishly presented and many published for the first time, covering the narrow gauge from Alamosa to Chama, Durango, Farmington, and Silverton.

The trains are captured in furious action, climbing steep mountain grades, crossing high trestles, winding beside rivers, and traveling vast flatlands. Thundering steam locomotives billow plumes of smoke, some doubled together at the head end and some assisted by rear helpers placed ahead of timeworn cabooses; they’re seen from trackside, from hilltops, from pacing cars, and from inside the cab. Exquisite scenes at day, night, and dusk capture the railroad people, engine houses, rolling stock, lineside structures, and magnificent scenery that shaped the Rio Grande’s legendary narrow gauge system.

Engaging essays by Hofsommer and Zimmermann, both of whom experienced the narrow gauge first-hand in the 1960s, provide context and personal insights. Extensive captions add context to the stories of the photographs, which trace the pattern of typical train operations of the era. The book concludes with a chapter of color images of today’s Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad and the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad.

Edited by Scott Lothes and Elrond Lawrence, the 10×10 book includes a map by David Styffe and nearly 200 outstanding photographs. The book will sell for $60. Pre-order information will be announced in August on our website and on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages.

Cover photo: Denver & Rio Grande Western locomotives 497 and 487 hammer up the four percent grade to Cumbres, Colorado, under a dramatic sky at Windy Point on October 3, 1967. Photograph by Victor Hand

Railroad Heritage Winter 2023: Film’s return, Bachman, Gruber, Watts, and more

Film is making a comeback and the Winter 2023 issue of Railroad Heritage is your guide to this developing trend! Highlights include:

  • Our cover story by Justin Franz explores the resurgence of film in railroad photography, featuring great photographs and perspectives from him and ten great photographers.
  • Ben Bachman explores the urban grit of Seattle — and the BNSF, UP, and Amtrak trains that crawl through its waterfront and downtown spaces – in a spectacular “Railroads and the Art of Place” photo feature.
  • Archivist Adrienne Evans interviews newer staff member Abigail Guidry, who is blazing through the processing of our John Gruber Collection, and you’ll see some of her favorite Gruber images.
  • Artist Roger Watts treats us to an in-depth look at his work and creative process, featuring ten of his stunning graphite drawings that range from steam locomotives to subways and container yards.
  • Elrond Lawrence’s fond tribute to legendary western rail photographer Stan Kistler, who passed away in September.
  • Artist Henry Widenaar’s Last Run, Swiss railways’ winter sports advertising, news, book reviews, and more!

If you don’t receive it already, join the Center and have four issues delivered to your mailbox each year.

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Help preserve the legacy of Richard Steinheimer

Preserving photographic materials like the priceless work of Richard Steinheimer requires significant investments of time, resources, and professional expertise. The majority of “Stein’s” photography arrived at the Center for Railroad Photography & Art in mid-June, where it joined our archive of half-a-million railroad images. We invite you to make a special gift today to support our efforts to survey, rehouse, digitize, and share Stein’s work—and all of the materials that make the Center’s growing archive such a special resource.

Join the preservation effort today!

Make your gift here.

Member Exclusive: Behind-the-Scenes with the Steinheimer Collection

Tuesday, August 2, 2022
7:00 p.m. (U.S. Central Time), on Zoom
Registration closes on Monday, August 1 at 4:30 p.m. (CST)

Registration Closed

CRP&A members can request the recording link at info@railphoto-art.org 

 

Member Exclusive: In appreciation for the generous support of our members, join us for a behind-the-scenes look at the Richard Steinheimer Collection and how it was prepared for its trip from Sacramento to the Center for Railroad Photography & Art’s archive in Madison, Wisconsin. Our special guest is Shirley Burman Steinheimer, “Stein’s” widow, partner, soulmate, fellow photographer and keeper of his tremendous visual legacy.

Shirley will join Stein devotees Elrond Lawrence and Ken Rehor for a special Zoom program on Tuesday, August 2, at 7 pm Central (5 pm PT / 6 pm MT / 8 pm ET). They will talk about Stein’s career and his groundbreaking photography, and Shirley will share tales of their adventures together.

The program will also include a member Q&A with Shirley and the team, including archivist Adrienne Evans and associate archivist Heather Sonntag, who will manage the cataloging and digitizing of the Steinheimer Collection. We’ll show pictures of the sorting and packaging of Stein’s beautiful prints and slides inside his office and darkroom, plus an early preview of favorite Steinheimer images both popular and seldom-seen.

This is the first preview of the collection since the Center set the rail photography world buzzing in June with news of the acquisition—which includes 30,000 color slides, thousands of Stein’s majestic black and white prints, black and white negatives circa 1975 and later, plus scans, and more.

 

 

About the Steinheimers

Richard Steinheimer (1929-2011) is considered one of the world’s greatest rail photographers, blazing a trail of creativity across California and the American West for six decades and inspiring generations of photographers to follow. He met Shirley Burman in 1983 and they married in 1984; the two became a formidable team across the railroad industry until he began suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Shirley will soon release a long-awaited book about railroad women titled Sisters of the Iron Road.


 

Stein’s thunderous portrait of Southern Pacific Alco PAs, which he called “honorary steam locomotives,” leading the City of San Francisco out of Oakland, California, on July 31, 1966. The extra-long train was due to an airline strike that summer. This beautiful print is one of thousands sorted and packed by the Center team in June in preparation for the entire collection’s trip to our archive in Madison, Wis.

 

Elrond Lawrence, Adrienne Evans, Shirley Burman, and Ken Rehor (left to right), sorted and packed the Steinheimer Collection in Sacramento, California, in preparation for the materials to move to the Center’s archive in Madison, Wis.

 

Shirley Burman and Dick Steinheimer at the R&LHS Awards in Los Angeles in 1983.