Nostalgia & History > California in the Steam Era

California had some great photographers and seemingly the railroads were friendly with the railfan fraternity. But California is a large state which much territory outside of heavy trafficed areas.  What were some lost opportunities?

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/20 13:15 by wabash2800.

People took pix all over the state in those days, as I recall.

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Among books that have been published, a number cover places in California that many (including me) never otherwise would have heard of. These range from Hetch Hetchy and its Dam Railroad by Ted Wurm to the outstanding 2 volume set Northern California Railroads - The Silver Age by Fred Matthews. The long departed monthly railfan magazine Pacific News seemed to cover just about anything on rails. And if you read a newspaper with a railfan photographer and publisher, you occasionally saw photos and articles that were of great local interest. I saw a lot but surely missed that which was published in newspapers and magazines (Sunset, for example) before my time.  

There is only one very short railroad in California that I have never seen exposed to the media, and that's probably simply because I missed seeing it. Will have to put a brief write-up and my photo on Trainorders this year.    

By and large those remote operations you mention have/had decent coverage over the years. I might say that in the last 25 years the Arcata and Mad River when
it was still servicing the Simpson mill didn't get much attention. The SP branches to the middle of nowhere got decent visits, the Lone Pine past Searles wasn't heavily
covered. But all in all it wasn't like they weren't noticed. There's even been shots of the ex-Santa Fe operation out of Alpaugh and that's pretty close to #1 on the missed
list.

Out 


 

Not sure I understand the OP's question.  Many of California's less busy lines have been photographed and those pictures have been published in many different books.  A couple which I have are The Northwestern Pacific Railroad, Volume Two by Fred Stindt and Railroads of the Yosemite Valley by Hank Johnson. 

My point is that not everything is photographed for various reasons. Here is the Midwest and East, photos from some roads or locations are very rare. And some don't exist at all. 

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



RuleG Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not sure I understand the OP's question.  Many of
> California's less busy lines have been
> photographed and those pictures have been
> published in many different books.  A couple
> which I have are The Northwestern Pacific
> Railroad, Volume Two by Fred Stindt and Railroads
> of the Yosemite Valley by Hank Johnson. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/20 18:05 by wabash2800.

There was so much Iowa that disappeared in the late sixties, early seventies. that I'm sure is very under photographed. There's little if anything
inn California in the last 25 that hasn't had some attention.

Out 

wabash2800 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My point is that not everything is photographed
> for various reasons. Here is the Midwest and East,
> photos from some roads or locations are very rare.
> And some don't exist at all. 
>
> Victor A. Baird
> http://www.erstwhilepublications.com
>
OK, now I understand better.  For California, I have yet to see photographs of railroads serving that state's breweries.  For the Midwest, there are very few photos of the Brillion & Forest Junction in Wisconsin.

For many years, there was a publication called "The Western Railroader," put out by the Northern California Railroad Club. Its pages covered virtually every rail subject in California, even industrial operations with just a critter or two. It put forth a tremendous amount of information over the years, but of course now it's long gone.

Consider the difference in population California vs Iowa and you can understand why CA was so well documented and IA suffered by comparison.  Actually, Iowa had/has some pretty good railfan photographers but few of them are fortunate to be able to publish books. 

While just about every area did get some coverage, I think it is safe to say the popular areas such as Cajon, Tehachapi, Donner, urban depots and busy mainlines were well covered and many local areas where the railfan/photographer lived were over looked. I some cases there was no effort to capture scene of the everyday activities that would 'always' be there or too common and not interesting at that time.

cliff

 

Cliff, guilty as charged, never even bothered to carry a camera except when out fanning. You're right, it was either too trivial or
"always be there". There were some real annoyances though ie the branches that were serviced at night or those with totally
infrequent service. 

Out 

trying to catch branchline trains was often a challenge, when did they run, would they turn back at a point because there was no business that trip beyond that point or they would get tied up switching or go to beans and eliminate the light for a good photo. One case like that was back in the late 60s or early 70s when a friend and I were out chasing the SP on the Baldwin Park Branch. The train was heading back towards West Colton or old Colton and we jumped ahead to get a shot in a vineyard near Graceland where the Santa Fe's Cucamunga Foothill Spur crossed the ex PE line. Looked good with afternoon light and mostly grape vines leading up to the mountains, except for the fairly new Chaffy College in the distance. Well we waited and waited, the train should not have take so long to get there from the last time we saw it at Upland. We waited until we lost the sun and later learned the the crew went to beans. Oh well the the joy of railfanning.

cliff

callum_out Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Cliff, guilty as charged, never even bothered to
> carry a camera except when out fanning. You're
> right, it was either too trivial or
> "always be there". There were some real annoyances
> though ie the branches that were serviced at night
> or those with totally
> infrequent service. 
>
> Out