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)

Center members are invited to register here

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.

This event is open to members of the CRP&A

Join Today! Become a member here

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.

Railroad Heritage, Summer 2022: Signal box life, BN photography & more

The Summer 2022 issue of Railroad Heritage, our beautiful quarterly magazine, is filled with great photography and stories, plus news about the Center and our collections … and no ads!

Highlights include:

“Life Inside a British Signal Box,” a stunning installment of Railroad and the Art of Place;
“From the Cab,” photography from a Burlington Northern engineer;
“Re-Photography” — before & after views of Southern railroading by Ron Flanary;
“The Great American Circus Train” photo feature with images by John Gruber, Thomas McIlwraith, and others;
Collection news about Henry Posner III, Stan Kistler’s color photography, Margaret Mailly’s paintings, and more;
Interviews with acquisitions & marketing coordinator Elrond Lawrence and author/volunteer John Kelly, a Conversations 2022 recap, and more!

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

$7.95, 68 pages, color and b/w; purchase individual copies: