Railroad Heritage, Summer 2020: Maps, Utah, Alban, Edmonson

Explore the art of railway and transit maps in the Summer 2020 issue’s cover story by Justin Franz in Railroad Heritage. Three additional feature articles await you. Mark W. Hemphill looks at the Denver & Rio Grande Western’s main line in Utah through the lenses of two talented photographers: George L. Beam and Otto C. Perry. Lee Alban shares how he discovered railroads and rediscovered painting in his second career as a railroad artist. And R.G. Edmonson showcases BNSF in the Texas Panhandle in this installment of “The Railroad and the Art of Place.” In our columns, Arjan den Boer looks at posters advertising station cafés in France in his “Art of the Railway Poster.” Adrienne Evans shares the first of her two-part overview about the history and care of glass plate negatives in “Out of the Archives.” And Hailey Paige chronicles the resounding success of our first-ever online conference, Virtual Conversations 2020, with more than 400 attendees from all over the world.

$7.95, 72 pages, color and b/w

Railroad Heritage, Spring 2020: Botkin, Hawkins, Walker

Travel around the world with photographer William E. Botkin in his quest for evocative black-and-white photographs of steam locomotives with the cover story of the Spring 2020 issue of Railroad Heritage. Inside, you can also learn what it takes to make a living as a railway artist with a glimpse into the life and work of Philip D. Hawkins, one of England’s foremost painters of trains. Gregory P. Ames presents the compelling story of a 1903 photograph and its creator, Dudley Walker, while touching on notions of pictorial photography as advertising art as well as evolving gender narratives in railroading. Arjan den Boer takes you all the way back to the Stone Age with his “Art of the Railway Poster” column, while additional columns by Hailey Paige and Adrienne Evans bring you up to date on our traveling exhibitions and collections, respectively. Finally, we share our ever-growing list of annual donors, the people whose generosity make possible all of our work at the Center for Railroad Photography & Art.

$7.95, 60 pages, color and b/w

Archives and Preservation resources

We hosted an archives and preservation Q&A with Adrienne Evans, our archivist, on Tuesday evening, May 19. Adrienne fielded dozens of questions about our collections and best practices for the archiving and preservation of analog as well as digital photographs. More than 130 people tuned in live, and you can watch a recording of the session on our YouTube channel.

Adrienne also prepared a list of resources that you can download here. We are already planning another online presentation about archives and perseveration as well as additional online programming throughout the summer. Stay tuned for details!

CRP&A Archives and Preservation Q&A

Tuesday, May 19, 2020
7:00-8:00 P.M. (U.S. Central)
Hosted by Adrienne Evans, CRP&A Archivist on Cisco Webex

Registration is closed.

CRP&A Archivist Adrienne Evans will answer your questions! Curious about the basics of photography archiving and preservation? Submit your questions to Adrienne to expand your knowledge and to learn more about becoming a better caretaker for your photographic materials.

Submit your archive-related questions to info@railphoto-art.org by end of day on Monday, May 11 to have them considered. Adrienne will answer as many questions as she can within the 60-minute time slot. Any additional time will be opened to questions in the Q&A feature on Cisco Webex.

Deadline for registration: Friday, May 15

Prior to the event date please register for a Cisco Webex Account. It is free to sign up.

We will send out a link for the meeting on Monday, May 18 by email. Please click on the link and sign into your Webex account on Tuesday, May 19 at 7:00 P.M. (U.S. Central) to access the Q&A session.

For additional questions relating to the event contact:

E. info@railphoto-art.org
P.608-251-5785 ext. 104 (archive questions)
608-251-5785 ext. 103 (registration / Webex questions)

Steam yacht, “Ellide,” rides a flatcar down the makeshift launching track by the steamboat dock at Baldwin, near the northern end of Lake George (New York), circa 1890. Photograph by Fred Thatcher from the Jim Shaughnessy Collection.

Virtual Conversations: Beautiful Fragility

Our next presentation for Virtual Conversations premieres on YouTube at 8pm Central Time on Friday, April 17. “Beautiful Fragility: Railroad Cinematography in the Pacific Northwest,” is an interview with filmmaker Camron Settlemier of Marcam Productions about his quarter-century quest to record the dying branch lines and short line railroads of the Pacific Northwest.

While still in college, Camron got his first video camera to capture the last summer of the Southern Pacific In Oregon. For the next thirteen years he put all available time, money and resources to pursue his interest in railroad videography, capturing some of the most vulnerable and interesting short lines and branch lines in the Pacific Northwest. They include the Camas Prairie, Saint Maries River, and Port of Tillamook, all which are now out of service. Camron is also known for professional Steam Videos, first working with Goodheart Productions, and later forming his own video company, Marcam Productions. In 2007 Marcam Productions was the first to release a steam railfan video in the US on High Definition Blu-ray, the “Legends of Steam” series. Today Camron subsists in his hometown of Albany, Oregon, and dreams of inventing a time machine to go back to a period of time worth videoing.

Learn more about Virtual Conversations, the Center’s first-ever online conference.

The Saint Maries River Railroad hauls logs to the mill in Saint Maries, Idaho, along its namesake river in October 2006. Photograph by Camron Settlemier