  YOU ARE BROWSING THE OLD STEAMCENTRAL.COM. TO SEE OUR LATEST ENTRIES, CLICK HERE. | ||
| Today’s Yesterdays: Photo Freights Recreate Steam’s Golden Age-and You Can Be There | ||
| by Erik Ledbetter | ||
 | ||
| Have you browsed a coffee-table book of images from steam’s golden age and found yourself thinking, “If only I could have been there?” Do you dream of hearing tall-stacked 4-8-0s rattle the windows of rural farmhouses the way O. Winston Link heard them, or of seeing fat-boilered Western Maryland 2-8-0s slug it out on Helmstetter’s Curve as A. Aubrey Bodine captured them, or of watching a narrow-gauge American 4-4-0 pick its way across the highline above the Animas Canyon as in the images of William Jackson Palmer? | ||
| While no one has yet invented a time machine, these scenes and others like them are being recreated today-and you can be there, camera in hand. The magic happens when a group of dedicated photographers approach the management of a tourist railroad with a challenge: take your steam engine and couple it up to the most historically accurate train you can put together, and we’ll charter your railroad for a day or a week to record the resulting images. Called “authentic photography” by some, “photo freights” by others, these special events are becoming an increasingly popular form of railfanning. Combing the pleasures of historical preservation with the excitement of lineside photography, photo freights recreate the drama of authentic steam railroading for those of us too young to have witnessed it first-hand. | ||
| While railfans have been charting steam engines and organizing special trains since at least the 1930s, the historic photography charter in its present form is a relatively recent invention. Until the early 1960s, historical train enthusiasts had lots of real-life steam to chase. Why go to elaborate lengths to recreate the past, when the past still lived on at North Carolina’s Graham County Railroad, Arkansas’s Reader, or Michigan’s Lake Superior and Ishpeming? After the last U.S. bastions of steam fell one by one, dedicated photographers turned their attentions overseas, traveling to Canada, Mexico and other locations even further afield where steam engines and 40-foot boxcars still held sway. Time and dieselization eventually caught up with all these holdouts. Yet even as the last overseas fires were dropped, steam was undergoing something of a revival right here in the United States, this time in the hands of tourist railroads and preservation groups. Today, on any given summer weekend, some 50 or more steam locomotives are in service around the country, and stack talk echoes again in the woods of Pennsylvania, the deserts of Nevada, and Colorado’s high San Juans. Pleasant as it was to see steam live again, for true historical railroading aficionados something was still lacking. Even the best tourist railroads were imperfect time machines. The 2-8-0 might look right, but how satisfying is that string of ex-Lackawanna electric commuter coaches it’s pulling? Where are the 40’ boxcars, the single-dome tank cars, the two-bay hoppers, and the wooden cabooses? How about the friction-bearing trucks? What would it take to recreate a real freight train, just as they used to be, and make it run again if only for a day or a weekend? | ||
| Small bands of enthusiast photographers began posing these questions more and more insistently in the 1970s and 1980s, and at certain tourist railroads they found a welcome answer. Some tourist lines retained sets of vintage freight cars, purchased perhaps for work train service, the occasional movie shoot, or simply for atmosphere. A vintage train could indeed be put together, for the right price. A band of like-minded photographers would pass the hat, write a check to the management, and photograph their “fantasy train” for a day-and so the photo freight charter was born. | ||
| From these humble beginnings, authentic photography charters have grown into a full-scale movement. Historical accuracy is the name of the game, and some photo charter organizers go to extreme lengths to recreate the scenes of the past as faithfully as possible-trimming back brush to open up overgrown photo angles, creating vinyl appliqué heralds to temporarily restore the names and liveries of long-gone railroads to locomotives and cars, and even repainting entire engines for a day or a weekend, only to return them to their present-day appearance at the conclusion of the charter. | ||
| Jim Gunning of Florida ably represents the new breed of “authentic photography” impresarios. A commercial aircraft pilot by profession but a lover of vintage steam railroads in his private time, Jim had a vision of photographing Pennsylvania’s historic 3’-gauge East Broad Top Railroad in its original, coal-hauling appearance. To Jim, that meant the 1940s-1950s era, when then railroad’s engines were still painted in basic black, with none of the white and silver paint applied during the tourist era. In 1991, Jim spent weeks researching a temporary, reversible way of changing an EBT engine’s appearance for a one-day photo shoot. A visit to a large art supply store in Orlando turned up water-soluble Tempera paint. To test the reversibility of the paint, Jim painted some sheet aluminum and also some painted metal with a small sample. After several days curing time, the paint came off easily with the application of water and some rubbing. His research done, Jim pitched the idea to EBT manager Stanley Hall, who gave his OK. With the help of comrade Dave Marquis, Jim worked his magic on Mikado No. 17 and then ran his one-day “basic black” period freight train in October 2001. The results spoke for themselves (Railfan and Railroad, January 2002). | ||
| For enthusiasts like Gunning, period freight train photography is a hobby; some canny fans have even found a way to turn it into a business. Chris Skow, a former Western Pacific conductor, makes his living running well-respected steam train charters though his company, Trains Unlimited Tours, Inc. Though rare-mileage excursions and overseas tours still form the bulk of his business, photo freights make up an increasing portion of his annual catalogue. Period freight train charters on “preserved in amber” lines like former Rio Grande narrow-gauge Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad in New Mexico or the standard-gauge Nevada Northern in Ely, Nevada draw a steady crowd of return patrons, and generate good revenue for the Skow’s tour company and the railroads alike. | ||
| Want to give period steam train photography a try yourself? Expect to put in a couple of long days and at least a couple of hundred dollars. Though photo charters have come down in price as the pool of participants has grown, they are still not as cheap as tickets to the ballgame. Expect to pay $250 a day on average, perhaps a little less per day if the trip is a multi-day affair-not too bad, when you consider that you’re renting an entire railroad and train crew for a day. Most charters run on weekdays to stay clear of regular tourist operations during the weekends, so expect to use some annual leave from work. Be prepared to get up early. Photography under prime conditions is the entire point, so departure from the depot is often set for 5:00AM, the better to catch the first sun of the morning out on the line. Finally, be prepared for long days-a typical charter may include as many as 30 photo runbys at 12 separate locations per day. That’s a lot of stopping and starting, and piling on and off the train; good fun for serious photographers, but not the thing for casual traveling companions. | ||
| Charter trips have an etiquette all their own. Since most trips are limited to a comfortable 25 people or so, there should never be any need to force your way into the photo line. If you’re a still photographer, you might bring along a small folding stepladder so you can shoot over the shoulders of your video colleagues at cramped locations. And since the train crews work long and hard on these trips, its customary to have a little extra cash on hand to toss into the kitty on the last day as a way of saying “thank you.” | ||
| What do you get for your time and money? A good charter organizer spends weeks in advance working with the host railroad to guarantee the best possible experience for all involved. Your host will most likely have scouted the line, identified prime photo locations, cleared away brush and scrub, and arranged an itinerary that takes you to each photo location at the optimal time of day. Generally he or she will also have arranged catered lunches and perhaps dinner, so you can stay out on the line for a full day’s work. You’ll also get to enjoy the camaraderie and good-fellowship of some of the most talented railfan photographers working today. Just listening to my fellow patrons on my first charter trips amounted to a clinic on films, equipment, exposure settings, and techniques from the best practitioners in the craft. Moreover, with multiple photo runbys at each location, you’ll have a chance to stretch your own skills as a photographer, trying challenging backlit shots, wide-angle landscape compositions, and other advanced techniques once the classic front-lit, "3/4 wedge shot" is in the bag. | ||
| Perhaps the toughest challenge for the novice participant is finding a trip to join. Many charter organizers are leery of advertising too widely, for fear of attracting non-paying “guests” who ruin the experience for the paying customers. However, there are ways to get involved. Some railroads find photography events so lucrative that they run publicly-advertised photo freights open to all comers: the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad in Cumberland, Maryland, has sponsored a two-day public railfan photography charter event with its big 2-8-0 for each of the last two years. Enthusiast groups like the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club have organized photo freights in their areas; check with you local railfan group or NRHS chapter to see if they do the same. You can also join an advertised photo freight tour like those offered by Trains Unlimited Tours. Finally, keep your eyes open for slide shows by other charter participants. If you enjoy the show, introduce yourself to the photographer, and ask how you can get involved in similar events. So get out there, and get on board. If you love steam locomotives and railroading the way it used to be, I promise you won’t regret it. And if you’re lucky, you’ll come home with images that will live on your study wall and in your memory for many, many years to come. | ||
| Erik Ledbetter is the Assistant Editor of Railway Preservation News: The Online Magazine of Railway History and Preservation (www.rypn.org | ||
| What's your reaction? Send your comments to mail@steamcentral.com. | ||
| YOU ARE BROWSING THE OLD STEAMCENTRAL.COM. TO SEE OUR LATEST ENTRIES, CLICK HERE. | ||