A batch of Penn Central photographs have been added to the John F. Bjorklund Collection page. In this shot Amtrak passenger train no. 360, the Wolverine, is operating on Penn Central at Niles, Michigan, on January 1, 1973.

View the entire album: www.railphoto-art.org/collections/bjorklund/penn-central

Bjorklund Collection Overview

• Gift of Rose Bjorklund
• 55,000 color slides
• 1960s to 2000s
• Coverage spans the United States and Canada

Selections of the Erie Lackawanna Railway from our John F. Bjorklund Collection have been uploaded. Included is this view of an eastbound EL freight train in Kirkwood, New York, on October 18, 1974.

View the entire album at:
www.railphoto-art.org/collections/bjorklund/erie-lackawanna-railway

Bjorklund Collection Overview

• Gift of Rose Bjorklund
• 55,000 color slides
• 1960s to 2000s
• Coverage spans the United States and Canada

Simon Jowett of the United Kingdom (above) and Olaf Haensch of Germany and have won first prize in the 2016 John E. Gruber Creative Photography Awards Program, in the “mobile device” and “most evocative” categories, respectively. Haensch won previously in 2008 and took second in 2009; Jowett is a first-time entrant. Second prizes went to Slovenia’s Miško Kranjec—another past winner—for “evocative,” and first-time entrant Ryder Bechtold of Denver, Colorado, for “mobile.” Charles McCreary of Minnesota and Jeremy J. Schrader of Illinois received the third prize awards, rounding out the top winners. Additionally, the judges selected a total of thirty-one images in their two “Also Liked” categories. We will soon add additional submissions for public viewing in a first-time web gallery.

Each of the three judges remarked that this year’s field was especially competitive, and that picking the winners was extremely difficult. The 331 entries came from 141 photographers living in more than thirty different states and ten countries—the second-most submissions all-time in a CRPA contest. After reviewing the images on their own, the judges spent more than four hours discussing and debating their final decisions. All of us at the Center extend our congratulations to the winners, thank the judges for their time and efforts, and thank everyone who submitted. Your work inspires us, and we can hardly wait to see what you will do next.

See all of the winners and read the judges’ commentary on the 2016 Awards page.

The Center’s first regionally-themed conference about railroad photography and art, Conversations Northeast, was a great success. Attendance was 115 for the one-day event, held on October 29, 2016, at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. Attendees came from fifteen different states. The conference, co-hosted by Archives & Special Collections of the UConn Library, featured seven presentations and three exhibitions at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. In the view at right, presenter Victor Hand shared his diesel-era photographs from the northeastern U.S. and around the world in “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Diesel.” Photograph by Steve Barry, Railfan & Railroad. See more photographs on the conference page.