Nostalgia & History > SFe steam, stem-to-stern

After working with so many B/W prints & negatives in the Gibson Collection I’ve been noticing a semi-recurring pattern, common to quite a few photographers from the steam era. It seemed like a great many roster shots and not just a few full-train shots were composed with very little to virtually no cropping area on the sides. I asked Art about this and he confirmed my suspicions. He told me the average photographer was mostly concerned about the economics of shooting, especially during the Great Depression years. So the average shooter was more worried about getting the most “bang-for-the-buck”, so to speak. And that meant getting as much detail as possible, which in turn meant using a very tight cropping style. This way the basic subject was as close to the camera as possible, providing the best possible detail.

I’m in NO way complaining! I’m just making light of a mostly obsolete facet of this hobby. With the introduction of digital photography the vast majority of us gratefully said “sayonara” to the shackles of paying for film & processing. Which means a shooter can “bracket” roster shots all he/she wants, and not have to compose images so tightly.

1. With “rods down” AT&SF 4-4-2 # 1453 poses for the camera in Topeka, KS on October 25, 1939.
“Stem-to-stern” B/W negative by Kenneth Goebel, from the Art Gibson collection

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Art Gibson (wag216)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/23 03:17 by santafe199.

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Great photo and the locomotive appears to have a San Berdo shop plate on it.  I have enclosed a photo of the builder's plate from a sister locomotive -  #1458.

Ron

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Handsome locomotive!

Nice plate, I saw a Topeka Shops plate hanging on a kitchen wall in Emporia 50 years ago, don't know whatever became of it. Never seen or heard of another since.

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steamfan759 Wrote:

> Great photo and the locomotive appears to have a
> San Berdo shop plate on it.  I have enclosed a
> photo of the builder's plate from a sister
> locomotive -  #1458.

February 1928 was when the engine was rebuilt from a four-cylinder balanced compound into a simple, single-expansion, two-cylinder machine.  Most of the 1452 class got the treatment and lasted into the 1940's.  The unlucky few that didn't were scrapped in 1924-28.