Tag Archives: Union Pacific

Fall 2024: Railroads & Public Art, Portland’s Switchers, Big Boy, and more

The Fall 2024 issue of Railroad Heritage, our quarterly journal, focuses on the “Art” in the Center’s name. But that’s not all … highlights of this beautiful magazine include:

  • Railroads and Public Art: From Montana to Texas to New York, Justin Franz looks at creative public art installations that pay tribute to railroads, their people, and their history;
  • Portland’s Switchers – Railroads and the Art of Place: Kyle Weismann-Yee explores BNSF and Union Pacific urban switch jobs with fifteen years of photographing the back streets and forgotten sidings of Portland, Oregon;
  • Painting for a Cause: Elrond Lawrence interviews artist Jim Potterton of Santa Cruz, California, whose dynamic artwork celebrates railroads while helping efforts to save a former Southern Pacific line;
  • A special edition of “Out of the Archives” goes underground with Adrienne Evans and Inga Velten, who show us many of the MTA Arts & Design program installations across New York’s subway system and commuter lines;
  • Steaming West with the Big Boy: The Center followed UP 4014 across Nevada to California, hosting a special member event in Roseville; Elrond Lawrence takes you along for the fun.

Also: The Art of Trains exhibition in New York City, our fantastic “Conversations” conference in June, the arrival of the Kalmbach Art Collection, Center news, and more!

Following the Golden Spike: Time, Place, and Change Along the First Transcontinental Railroad

Tuesday, August 18, 2020
7:00-8:00 P.M. (U.S. Central), on Cisco Webex

Now Available on YouTube

Join artist Drake Hokanson, contributing author and photographer to the Center’s publication After Promontory, in a re-photography trip along the original Union Pacific route.

Throughout the 150 years since the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, many parts of the 1,800-mile route between Omaha and Sacramento have changed enormously. Some sections are busy, three-track, state-of-the-art mainline; others are abandoned to the desert wind. In his presentation, Hokanson will address the broader history of railroads and photography and expand on how these two technologies came of age together in the nineteenth century and profoundly changed how we experienced the world. Through his black and white photographs, Drake Hokanson will explore the layered past, the natural and human geography, and the deeper meaning of this linear landscape.

Drake Hokanson is an author, photographer, and independent scholar who looks to the broad American land, its places, well-worn paths, people, and stories as the subjects for his photographs, books, exhibits, and essays. He is the author/co-author of three books, has edited and contributed to several others, and has exhibited photographs coast to coast. His other experience includes teaching photography and nonfiction writing at the university level for some thirty years.

Terrace, Utah, showing ties left in place on the original Promontory transcontinental route. Drake Hokanson.