John C. Illman

John C. Illman was born on October 17, 1921, in Seattle, Washington. Growing up, he lived in Seattle; St. Vincent, Minnesota; and Vancouver, British Columbia. While living in Vancouver, he was a paper boy and a drummer in an all-city boys band, the Kitsilano Boys Band. The band spent the summer of 1936 touring the British Isles, playing three concerts a day at various summer resorts and festivals. The band also traveled throughout the United States and Canada, most notably representing Vancouver at the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Throughout their tours, the band primarily traveled on the Canadian Pacific Railway, which sparked Illman’s lifelong interest in railroads.

After graduating from Magee High School in 1938, Illman and his mother moved to Seattle, where he enrolled in the University of Washington, majoring in chemistry. During his college years, he was a member of the University Symphonic Band. During the summers of 1941 and 1942, he enrolled at the Friday Harbor Laboratories, working as a deckhand/seawater analyst on the research vessel Catalyst, and as a janitor while working on his master’s research. At Friday Harbor, he met his future wife, Marjorie Kincaid. He received a Bachelor of Science in December 1941 and a Master of Science in June 1943.

Immediately after graduation, he and Marjorie were married on June 15, and they moved to California and a new job at Shell Development Company in Emeryville. There, he worked on a government contract to develop a new plastic for the radomes of Navy bombers and later on many other projects, ranging from solid rocket propellants to detergents. The Illmans’ three children were born in Oakland, California, and grew up in the East Bay communities of Albany and El Cerrito.

Illman’s passion for 60 years was the photography of trains in action. He took up railroad photography at age 26, around 1948, and some of his favorite locations were in the Bay Area, including Giant, Pinole, San Francisco Bay, and east of Richmond, California. More than 500 of his photographs were published in multiple books, as well as in Trains, Classic Trains, Railfan & Railroad, Vintage Rails, Pacific Rail News, CTC Board, Passenger Train Journal, Model Railroader, and Railroad Model Craftsman magazines.

Leaving Shell in 1972, when the laboratories moved to Houston, Illman then worked for Shaklee Corporation until he finally retired in 1976. He and Marjorie sold their house and took a 10-month trailer trip around the country, ending in March 1977, when they built their house on Marrowstone Island in Washington State. During their retirement, they traveled extensively in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.

Illman was active in the affairs of the island community, serving as president of the Nordland Community Club (now the Marrowstone Island Community Association, MICA) on several of its committees and as a member of the Jefferson County Planning Commission. In 1986, he was chosen as the MICA Citizen of the Year.

Illman passed away on May 20, 2013, at the age of 91. Dick Dorn donated his collection to the Center in January of 2022–he had purchased the collection from Illman in 2003.