And why not? What could be more magical than this Brigadoon-like world of 3-foot-gauge track, wooden cars, and 2-8-2s, surrounded by the majesty of the San Juan Mountains?
An A-list of shooters descended over the years on Antonito, Chama, Durango, Silverton, and other memorable places on the “Silver San Juan.” You’d recognize the names: Dick Kindig, Otto Perry, Philip R. Hastings, John Gruber, Jim Shaughnessy, Dick Steinheimer, and so many more.
That list would not be complete without including Frank Barry, an insightful photographer whose penetrating black-and-white images just might convey better than anyone else’s the tail end of regular steam freight service on D&RGW. The evidence is in a lovely book called The Last Winter, just out on Barry’s own Fresh Dirt Publications imprint.
It’s a big book in format — the 12x12-inch size allows for generous images — and the printing and paper quality more than make up for the relatively compact 66 pages. The hardcover book is priced at $40 and is available at the photographer’s website, www.frankbarryphotography.com.
Barry’s book has won the endorsement of Scott Lothes, executive director of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art (www.railphoto-art.org), which in the past has showcased the photographer at its annual conference.
“As a steam photographer, Frank inserted himself deeply into the places, operations, and communities he was covering,” Lothes says. “By living and working in Chama, he got to know the Rio Grande narrow gauge lines far better than the typical photographer who just visited the area for a few days. Frank’s ‘residential’ approach gives his work an intimacy that still resounds nearly six decades later.”
Barry’s motivation was simple: he wanted to catch what he calls “the last long-distance steam locomotive show in the United States.”
“It was cold, so I didn’t want to go, but he was excited, I thought, it’s an adventure, and put on my coat and boots. We went to the railroad yard and there was this big snow-bedecked engine softly steaming as it settled down from its run. It was magical. I held the shutter open as Frank ran around and fired off flash bulbs and I thought to myself, Now I can see what he sees!”
Frank Barry saw a lot, especially when it came to creating sweeping portraits of a majestic landscape challenged by small but powerful steam locomotives. Nearly all the fabled locations on the D&RGW are here: a 2-8-2 lugs stock cars up to Windy Point; a road engine and helper ease a train over Lobato Trestle; an eastbound freight is silhouetted against a blindingly brilliant snowscape at Los Pinos; a 2-8-2 and helper send a cannonade of exhaust smoke skyward as they hug the mountainside between Cresco and Coxo.
Barry’s photos have intimate moments, too: the bone-chilling cold of a winter night at the Chama shops as snow begins to blanket resting 2-8-2s awaiting the next morning’s assignments; the loading of cattle into stock cars, a ritual that would last but a few more months; and a view of the photographer himself, tending to that common curse of a railroad photographer in the field — a flat tire.
Barry is an engaging writer with a fine eye for detail, and he obviously took good notes. In summing up his experiences in and around Chama, he writes: “When I took these photos, the end was near, but I did not know I was in fact recording the very last winter of regular steam operation in severe weather conditions anywhere in North America. I was very lucky to be there.”
Thanks to Frank Barry’s often spectacular, sometimes heartbreaking book, we are, too.
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