Nostalgia & History > Rail Photo Service - H. W. Jack Pontin

Readers of long-ago Trains magazine will recognize the credit line above. Jack Pontin provided thousands of pictures to Trains magazine and other publications. With a base in New England, IIRC, and correspondents from all over the country. Locomotives, roster shots, freight cars, new passenger moves, etc.

The service was active in the 1940s and 1950s. What happened to the archive, and was there even an archive?


(Prompted by the recent thread on David P. Morgan, the long time Trains editor)

When I was a kid I thought all the train pictures in Railroad and Trains magazines were from Rail Photo Service. I didn't know railfans took pictures. In fact I didn't know there were railfans!

JBOldfart

Pontin also sold prints, usually 5x7's to railfans. I don't know how you got on his mailing list. I've picked up a few prints over the years from photo sellers at train shows. I believe the negative collection, which must have been nothing short of fantastic, wound up at some New England railroad museum operation, but I can't recall where. Its been over 30 years now when I tried to track it down looking for Milwaukee Road electrification photos. 

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> Readers of long-ago Trains magazine will recognize
> the credit line above. Jack Pontin provided
> thousands of pictures to Trains magazine and other
> publications. With a base in New England, IIRC,
> and correspondents from all over the country.
> Locomotives, roster shots, freight cars, new
> passenger moves, etc.
>
> The service was active in the 1940s and 1950s.
> What happened to the archive, and was there even
> an archive?
>
>
> (Prompted by the recent thread on David P. Morgan,
> the long time Trains editor)

This same Jack Pontin was also an engineer on the Boston & Albany Railroad

Tom Coughlin
Stow, MA (not that far from the B&A mainline)