CRP&A member exclusive program: Steinheimer’s Sierra Crossing

Join us for an inside look at the Richard Steinheimer & Shirley Burman Steinheimer Collection!

Tuesday, September 17, 2024
7:00 pm Central Time on Zoom
5 pm Pacific, 6 pm Mountain, and 8 pm Eastern

In a rush of locomotives climbing through smoky snow sheds, plowing “Sierra cement,” and carrying passengers over “the Hill,” Associate Archivist Heather Sonntag has viewed volumes of Richard Steinheimer’s visual storytelling across Donner Pass. She’s digitized frame after frame of his adventures on Southern Pacific’s legendary mountain crossing between Roseville and Truckee, California. In this exclusive Zoom program for Center members, see how Heather experienced this historic line through Stein’s famed photography of Donner that spans nearly fifty years, from 1951 to 1998.

She’ll provide an overview of Stein’s color work as it appears in the Richard Steinheimer and Shirley Burman Steinheimer Collection and notable publications. Focusing on the color slides in this extensive Donner series, Heather highlights a mix of iconic and previously unseen images that reflect Stein’s fearlessness, friendliness, and good fortune to document this favorite passage of railroad history, power, and people.

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Following Heather’s presentation, she’ll be joined by writer-photographer Elrond Lawrence, the Center’s Acquisitions & Marketing Coordinator and a lifelong Stein devotee, for final thoughts and an audience Q&A.

Heather Sonntag joined the Center in 2020 as an associate archivist. She holds a doctorate in cultural history with a focus on 19th-century photography albums and a master’s of library and information studies from UW-Madison. She has interned with the Library of Congress and worked as an assistant archivist of visual materials at the Wisconsin Historical Society. The Richard Steinheimer and Shirley Burman Steinheimer Collection is Heather’s second to process for the Center; the Ronald C. Hill Collection was her first.

Steinheimer’s snowy pre-dawn image of a westbound SP freight passing a spreader at Truckee, Calif., in March 1985. Steinheimer-Burman-AM-065.

SP trains at the Norden, Calif., snow sheds in March 1983. Photo by Richard Steinheimer, Steinheimer-Burman-D-132.

A sample slide from Heather’s upcoming presentation, featuring Stein’s Kodachromes with notes by him and wife Shirley.

Kalmbach Media donates historic art collection to Center

The Center for Railroad Photography & Art has been named the recipient of Kalmbach Media’s historic art collection, totaling fifty-eight original paintings spanning the hallowed rail publishing company’s history since its founding by A.C. Kalmbach in 1934.

The announcement was made today by Scott Lothes, Executive Director of CRP&A, who worked closely with Kalmbach executives in their search to locate the right permanent home and keep the collection together.

“Kalmbach is a name that has thrilled, educated, and inspired generations of railfans, photographers, and artists, and this collection couldn’t be a better expression of the Center’s mission to preserve and celebrate significant railroad art,” said Lothes. “It’s a tremendous honor and responsibility to care for the Kalmbach Art Collection, and to honor the work of so many artists and designers who poured their talents into illustrating the railroads that they loved.”

The Kalmbach Art Collection is filled with landmark work from renowned artists such as Howard Fogg, George Gloff, Gil Reid, Ted Rose, John Swatsley, and many others. The works were commissioned for use in Trains magazine and in Kalmbach Books—in many cases created by the company’s own designers and artists. Some works were viewed by tens of thousands of railroad fans, appearing inside the magazine, on its covers, or in best-selling books such as The Hiawatha Story and The Nickel Plate Story.

The collection was recently moved to the Center’s archive in Madison, Wisconsin, not far from Kalmbach’s offices in Waukesha. In late June, Kalmbach Media sold many of its marquee magazine titles, including Trains, Classic Trains, and Model Railroader, to Firecrown Media in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“The Center is beyond thrilled to be the recipient of the Kalmbach Art Collection,” said Bon French, Chairman of the Center’s board. “Not only is it a spectacular collection in its own right, but the art invokes many memories for those of us that frequented the hallowed halls of the Kalmbach offices. As the Kalmbach name will otherwise disappear, it’s great that we can preserve the legacy of a ninety-year-old company with a revered name through the collection.”

“We couldn’t have found a better home for our historic collection of railroad art than the Center for Railroad Photography & Art,” said Dan Hickey, Chief Executive Officer for Kalmbach Media. “We are confident that it is the best organization to both preserve the Kalmbach collection and share it with the public. Our founder, A.C. Kalmbach, would be very proud to know that the railroad art accumulated by Kalmbach Media and enjoyed by our employees for decades will also be appreciated by future generations through the expert stewardship of the Center.”

“I can’t imagine a better outcome for Kalmbach’s corporate art collection than to have it find a permanent home with the Center,” said Kevin P. Keefe, a Center board member and former vice president-editorial at Kalmbach. Keefe brought the collection to light in the mid-2010s when he detailed the most important pieces and their histories in a company report he authored prior to his retirement. “In so many ways, Trains and Kalmbach Books played indispensable roles in creating the world of railroad imagery we love so much, and the company’s original art is a big part of that legacy.”

“Over the years, there has been a strong bond between Kalmbach and the Center,” Keefe added. “The donation of this collection is a celebration of that relationship.”

Roaring through Rondout, watercolor on paper by Gil Reid, appeared on the cover of Kalmbach’s most successful hardcover book, The Hiawatha Story. Reid’s painting illustrates Milwaukee Road Class A Atlantic 1 in 1935.

Electro-Motive E7 for Train of Tomorrow, tempera on board, by Allen J. Brewster, as seen on the cover of the January 1979 issue of Trains magazine.

Arrival of the art collection at the Center’s archive in Madison, Wis. Pictured from left: Inga Velten, Lisa Hardy, Kevin Keefe, and Adrienne Evans. Photo by Gil Taylor.

An evening with the winners of the 2024 John Gruber Creative Photography Awards

This presentation was recorded and will be made available soon on our YouTube page, www.youtube.com/railphotoart

Tuesday, August 20, 2024
7:00 PM (U.S. Central Time), on Zoom
8 pm ET, 6 pm MT, 5 pm PT

The 2024 Creative Photography Awards brought 383 submissions from 143 photographers representing 32 states and 9 countries in response to the theme, “Conveyance.” In this evening with the winners, hosted by photographer-writer and Center staffer Elrond Lawrence, you’ll hear their stories and insights behind the winning pictures, as well as their approaches to rail photography.

Scheduled to appear live:
Ewan McLean – First prize winner, color
James Duval – Second prize winner, black-and-white
Ryan Gaynor – Second prize winner, color
Darryl Bond – Third prize winner, color
We’ll also hear from Dafydd Whyles, first prize winner, black & white

Learn more about this year’s winning photos and see the “Judges Also Liked” pictures at the Center’s Flickr page.

This event is free. Join us for a great evening with people who love rail photography!

Ewan McLean, 1st prize winner, color
The Victorian Goldfields Railway (VGR) is a preservation group that operates trains in the northwestern part of Victoria, Australia. Ewan and his wife were riding on the observation deck of the ‘Tambo’ through the gum tree forest on the outskirts of Castlemaine; Ewan captured this shot of steam locomotive J541’s smoke illuminated by the sun’s rays, on April 18, 2011.

Dafydd Whyles, 1st prize winner, black & white
With a palpable sense of anticipation, a single-car passenger unit arrives at Worksop station in Nottinghamshire, UK, with a lone passenger waiting. The train is passing the 1880-built signal box (cabin).

Technical Genius: Behind the scenes with O. Winston Link’s famous photographs

Take an in-depth and behind-the-scenes look into technical aspects of several photographs of O. Winston Link, the famed 1950s railroad photographer who iconically captured some of the last steam trains in America, set against the picturesque backdrop of rural Appalachia. Ashley Webb, curator of collections and exhibitions for the O. Winston Link Museum, will present and examine the notebooks, letters, and installation images of some of the photographer’s more iconic and technically complex works.

Tuesday, July 9, at 7:00 p.m. Central Time

(5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, 6:00 p.m. Mountain, and 8:00 p.m. Eastern)

This free presentation is available to view on our YouTube page.

Ashley Webb received her B.A. in History and Anthropology from Longwood University, in Farmville, Virginia, and her M.A. in Museum Studies from Bournemouth University, in Dorset, England. She is currently the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions and acting Executive Director with the Historical Society of Western Virginia, which operates both the Roanoke History and the O. Winston Link Museums. In addition to her job with the Historical Society, Ashley works with several local museums as a contract museum collections specialist. Her specialty is fashion history and she owns Bustle Textiles, a historic dress preservation company.

Based in Roanoke, Virginia, the O. Winston Link Museum collection comprises the striking photographic and auditory works developed by photographer-artist O. Winston Link between 1955 and 1960. A successful commercial photographer from New York, Link brought his studio outdoors to create carefully arranged images designed to convey the end of Norfolk & Western’s steam locomotives and the communities and countryside they passed through. The museum – which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year — is the repository for all of Link’s Norfolk & Western negatives, and contains both rotating and permanent exhibitions; learn more at: roanokehistory.org

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Above: O. Winston Link’s masterpiece “Hot Shot Eastbound at the Drive-In, Iaeger, West Virginia, 1956.” Below: A behind-the-scenes view of Link in action, from the July 9 presentation.

Plowden exhibition to appear at Illinois Railway Museum

Beginning mid-June, the Illinois Railway Museum will present Requiem for Steam: Railroad Photographs of David Plowden, produced in cooperation with the Center for Railroad Photography & Art. “Conversations” attendees who join our planned museum events on Friday, June 14, will enjoy a special reception from 5:00 to 7:00 pm celebrating the exhibition.

David Plowden and the Center produced this traveling exhibit of more than 50 black & white images. It traces the renowned photographer’s fascination with railway steam power, starting from a childhood spent watching steamboats on the East River, in New York City, and traveling behind steam-powered passenger trains in New England. His featured work includes the end of the steam era in the 1950s, and more recent examinations of steam’s lingering imprints on the American landscape.

The traveling exhibition will continue through late December. For more information, visit the Illinois Railway Museum’s web page.

The “Conversations” conference will continue for a full day on Saturday, June 15 and a half day on Sunday, June 16, at Lake Forest College near Chicago, headlined by an exciting lineup of photographers and artists. Visit our conference page for the schedule and listing of presenters.

David Plowden’s portrait of a Canadian Pacific 2-8-2 in Montreal, Quebec, in 1960.

An overview of the Requiem for Steam exhibition at Illinois Railway Museum.