Thanks again for visiting Ed. Next time you stop by I hope you can stay a bit longer and enjoy the collection some more.
Take Care
-Nick Fry
Curator
John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library
Great point OWTX....one of the interesting things about Staggers was railroads were given freedom for pricing and the rate dropped for years.
Recently rates seem to be moving up....drawing the ire of the shipping community.
Ed
The massive gains in productivity cut against the mythology of Staggers.
I don't care how unregulated the market is, if MOW work was done and staffed as it was in 1970, there isn't a class I that wouldn't be bankrupt in short order.
One of the more interesting details in the photographs are the number of railroad employees visible. Many of the photos feature either small town depots or junctions. Check out how many employees are on the ground.
Two things come to mind:
1. Obviously railroading is much more productive than in the past. The mechanization of the ROW has eliminated a large number of employees.
2. When winter hits hard, as it has this year, productivity doesnt fit snow nearly as well as boots on the ground. Or perhaps that is just my perception.
Beyond railroad, the photos are a fascinating view of the past.
The images are not what were shot for a railroad passenger department of exotic destinations. Everwhere the rails went Mr. Barringer's camera went. What others would ignore as every day was put to record.
Not having sorted through but a glimpse Midwestern lines, the images of rural communities and countryside tell many stories. Nearly every small town of more than a few thousand had some kind of smoke stack industry along the tracks. Much shown is no more.
Some photographs show cross roads of but a few blocks of stores. People are seen going about their business. Bleak empty streets in the dead of winter make you wonder. Did the crops fail in the summer prior. Some of those towns are no more.
Corn does not appear as tightly planted to the acre. Tractors in transit on flat cars and in fields were considered huge for their time. Such machines are now sought to maintain acreages and are displayed at antique machinery gatherings.
The collection is a treasure for anybody researching the past whose interest is not necessarily railroading.
MP173 I have been absolutely amazed by the John Barriger National Railroad Library Flickr photos. What a unique look at railroading in the 30's - 40's .http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/sets/ It is a minor inconvenience that the photos are not identified by location and some are flipped backwards. This is an amazing undertaking by the Barriger library. Ed
I have been absolutely amazed by the John Barriger National Railroad Library Flickr photos. What a unique look at railroading in the 30's - 40's
.http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/sets/
It is a minor inconvenience that the photos are not identified by location and some are flipped backwards. This is an amazing undertaking by the Barriger library.
ED:
Have had some limited opportunities to go back and 'surf' thru this site. Also to look at some other aspects of these UMSL[University of Missouri-St. Louis] Mercantile Library Collections.
This is a link to one of their pages @ http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/plan-your-visit/driving-directions.html
Contains some information and directions. There is a link on the site to apiece about Mr. Robert McKnight and some of the help he gave to the Library and might be a resource for those into railroad signals and signaling? @http://blogs.umsl.edu/news/tag/john-w-barriger-iii-national-railroad-library/
There is a recent FLICKR posting of Mr. Barriger's visit to the ARR of Puerto Rico by Nick Frye for a study of that line in that 1940s or 1950s (?) @ http://ferrocarrilespr.rogerseducationalpage.com/?p=4465
It's marvelous and pictures of things I never expected to see and things I didn't know ever existed. There are locations that I'm well familiar with but what has struck me with some of them is how much more track was there then. There are pictures of places that I've known as only weed grown empty spots and foundations but here they are, looking clean and neat and in service.
Backwards, upside down, not going to complain and surprised by those who are, this was an unexpected treasure, another addition to things I would have never seen had there not been an Internet.
Yes, it is enjoyable trying to figure them out by whatever means.
There are many visual clues as to where some of the photos were taken. And historical clues if you know the history of the particular railroad. Figuring out where a photo was taken can be challenging research, if you know how to do it and have the available resources.
tatans Yikes ! 7 million great photos of train stuff and no description of what they are or where the photo was taken, this relegates these photos almost useless, plus writing in large white letters some numbers in the middle of the photo.
Yikes ! 7 million great photos of train stuff and no description of what they are or where the photo was taken, this relegates these photos almost useless, plus writing in large white letters some numbers in the middle of the photo.
Thank you for all of your efforts. I'm seeing Western Maryland pictures, such as the Challenger and Potomac at the Maryland Junction coaling tower, that I have never seen before. Truly a treasure trove of railroading history.
Poppyl
I was travelling thru St. Louis today and stopped at the Barriger Library. Nick Fry was there and we chatted, he is doing a great job with the photos.
A quick word about the library. It is an amazing collection of books, primarily reference material on the operations, finances, and corporate records of the mid 1900s. What really appealed to me was the complete collection of Official Guides. My father talked of taking the Illinois Central passenger trains out of our hometown of Dundas, Il in the 1920s. I looked up and was able to see the schedules.
We only stayed about 20 minutes and then resumed our trip to Oklahoma. This is a great reference for historians and interested people of the industry. I will be back.
MP173 I just took a peek at the first page of the Milwaukee Road and the photos there (small sample) were outstanding. I think Mr. Barriger's camera equipment took a leap forward. Been going photo by photo thru the ATSF shots. Once upon a time in 1966 I rode the Santa Fe from LaJuanta to Kansas City and have vague memories of the station in LaJuanta. Hopefully will be able to see that. Ed
I just took a peek at the first page of the Milwaukee Road and the photos there (small sample) were outstanding. I think Mr. Barriger's camera equipment took a leap forward.
Been going photo by photo thru the ATSF shots. Once upon a time in 1966 I rode the Santa Fe from LaJuanta to Kansas City and have vague memories of the station in LaJuanta. Hopefully will be able to see that.
Thanks, Ed
For posting the links to the Barriger Library Photo Collection.
Kudos to Nick Fry for the work to get a fascinating historical photo collection posted on the " NET".
I went to the album labeled for the Katy (MKT RR); I found photos of buildings long gone in Southeast Kansas. Not much left there these days, except for foundations now. The huge MKT Backshops there are just a small portion of what they once were.
I cannot stay away from this collection. A weekend highlight for me was to find the hometown Olney, Il depot on the B&O collection (page 10, photo 546). I learned from the photo there was a passing siding at the depot and was able to see a photo of the tower which protected the IC branchline (which I grew up near).
Further, the photo was taken from the rear of an eastbound train with a passenger train in the siding. With the help of a 1946 Official Guide, my "best guess" is that Barriger was on the EB National Limited and it was the Dipomat in the siding.
I had a similar positioned photo at the Lawrenceville, Il depot (which I took in 1975)...what a great way to track "progress" thru the years.
I trust these photos will be "fixed" and there are enough people who are adding locations to the comments.
Love the collection.
ed
Hi All
It is an amazing collection.
Considering how recently it has been digitized and put on the web, the commentary forthcoming on the right sidebar so far is quite comprehensive. I won't be at all surprised to see the so far un-described and 'disoriented' pictures reversed, etc.
As Mr Fry pointed out this is just the start. His methodology, as he explained it, going forward makes all kinds of sense IMO. I'm sure there are enough people out in cyberspace who can comment collectively on every picture there.
It will take time for them to see these pictures and add their comments. Mr Fry is one smart curator. My hat is off to him.....
Charlie
Chilliwack, BC
Again, our thanks to everyone who is enjoying the photos. The decision to go with what we had wasn't taken lightly, but the alternative would have been for these images to be sitting on a hard drive in my office, unavailable to even our on-site patrons at the time. So, we posted and we're using the Aviary tool in Flickr to flip and crop.
Once we finish with these negatives we'll start the rather laborious process of pulling scanned copies of the prints off of the scans of the scrapbook pages that include captions and trip information. New sets will be created arranging them by trip, just as Mr. Barriger did in the 1940's when he and his secretaries began these scrapbooks. (We'll still keep the road name sets, it's easier for some people to just bask in their favorite railroad that way.) Also this will NOT delete the existing comments posted on the photos that are up now. We can replace the images without deleting the record.
Right now I'm on the fence about where to start with the scrapbooks. Either we go with railroads that had no copy negatives and therefore didn't even make this upload or we go straight through alphabetically. I'm leaning on doing some gap-filling first as some lines like the W&LE, P&WV and UP are under-covered. There are also several short lines and terminal lines that have no copy negatives. This may change based on discussions I have with the person who will be doing the work.
If you'd like a more exhaustive list of the railroads covered, go to:
http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/collections/barriger-library-special-collections/assets/pdf/BarringerPhotos.pdf
Hopefully we can put this project to bed by the end of CY 2014 and go to the next project on Flickr. We may need a second Terabyte of space though. (Right now we're leaning towards digitizng Stanley Barriger's color slide collection of his various railroad trips that starts in the mid-1950s.)
Again, thank you all for enjoying Mr. Barriger's photos. We are all really glad that the response has been so enthusiastic.
Curator, John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library
What a great collection!
Don't like how they look? Download them and tweak them in photoshop yourself. I'll take quantity over quality any day for stuff like this!
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Well at least these folks are trying to make this stuff accessible. It's a start and Nick's tribe is out soliciting for more before it gets lost*. For all the $$$ spent on the preservation of shiny toys, there is much too little effort spent on preserving the record(s) and images of the past in a railroad sense.
For the buttonpushers out there looking for instant gratification - too bad. (don't see where you are any help or donating your time) What Barriger Library is doing is a process that will take time.
*(seen that and talked to Nick)
MP173 You guys are a tough crowd. I am thrilled to have access to this unique and historic treasure. Part of the intrigue is trying to determine the location of the photo. Yes, some of the photos are flipped or upside down. Would we be better off without access?Ed
You guys are a tough crowd. I am thrilled to have access to this unique and historic treasure.
Part of the intrigue is trying to determine the location of the photo. Yes, some of the photos are flipped or upside down. Would we be better off without access?Ed
Well, we can be a little fussy.
Given the quantity of images, some slip-ups are a given, but a brief glance over a page of images should indicate that something is amiss. I've got a nag-ware program on my computer that will flip images - just a day doing so would probably cure 99% of those.
The labelling may go a little deeper - it's possible that some (or many) images lacked identification. If that's the case, then some form of feedback would help make the resource a little more authoritative. Some of the fun is trying to figure out where the pictures were taken. Ironically, one picture that I was able to identify almost immediately was already labelled...
These images are a fantastic resource, and we are lucky to have them available. It can only go up from here.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Clicking around, the owners indicate they are working on the problems we've mentioned.
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
It should be up to the actual and official owner of the pictures to either do it him/herself or appoint someone to officially organize and sort. I can identify about 80% of the DL&W files but not date them. I haven't opened the rest to see what's in them. The worst thing would be, for the sake of accuracy and calm, is to have everybody taking shots at doing it...we'd get all kinds of confusion and maybe even misinformation.. (Even if "officially" done, there could be misinformation but at least that would be a clearing house for making things right.)
tatansYikes ! 7 million great photos of train stuff and no description of what they are or where the photo was taken...
I agree. Add in the photos that are upside down (never mind reversed or just crooked) and it's a mess.
Even if those creating the archive didn't have the information, it would be nice if there were a feedback mechanism so those who do recognize a given location could have that information added to each image.
Oh there are captions and diagrams and photos arranged by trip in the scrapbooks. Even then, we don't have a caption for every photo.
What's online are the copy negatives. Made from the original nitrate negatives that Mr. Barriger saved and were starting to decay and had become extremely hazardous in the 1990s. Not every negative survived to this point and as you will probably see, some negatives degraded but were still duplicated.
This is just the very first step to getting this collection online. We have staff who are available to answer questions and we will eventually be posting the scrapbooks online as a unit. Also we're seeing a lot of crowd-sourcing for information on the photos. Captions and other actions such as replacing bad negatives with scans of prints will come later.
We're really happy with the response we're getting from the photos and hope everyone continues to enjoy them.
Looks like the images are digitized film slides and the person that did the digitizing decided to put the writing on the edges of the slides "up" (toward the camera) so they could be easily read, not realizing that the writing was for the person loading the slide projector from behind to read and that the image would be reversed by the projector.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/sets/
FTFY.
Norm
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