Railfanning then was hardly the or- ganized,


focused, and well-connected


community it is today. Most of us rail- fans at that time manifested our inter- est in railroading through model rail- roading at a club. Jim began making regular appearances at our meetings, holding court with whoever would lis- ten to his colorful (and sometimes off- color) tales of travels to exotic railroad havens outside our “territory.” One evening he waltzed in toting a slide projector. “Hey guys; here’s some slides I took earlier this week.” Big, bold, in-your-face train imagery, blazing with color, followed in quick succession on the screen: CLICK- KACHUNK— Santa Fe Alco PAs leaving Chicago with the Grand Canyon — CLICK-KACHUNK — new Chicago & North Western GP30s grinding up Dixon Hill with a road freight — CLICK- KACHUNK — a Burlington E5 A and B set on the Morning Zephyr at Oregon, Illinois, and so on. This sheltered 15- year-old and my best buddy Parry Donze, about the only other railfan peer in the crowd, swooned at the cor-


36 MARCH 2012 • RAILFAN.COM


nucopia of scenes, until others in the audience were looking at us more than Jim’s slides. “Look! I think Schafer has wet himself!” Those highly anticipated Friday night slide shows at the club were a turning point for me. Forget the model trains; my new quest was to doc- ument the real railroading world. Jim saw the eagerness in several of


us rag-tag teens from Dixon and Rock- ford. He began mentoring us in photog- raphy and railfanning, dragging us wide-eyed newbies all over the country- side to experience railroading beyond


RIGHT: Jim’s first love in the realm of rail- roading was steam, and we chased many fantrips. The trick was to create a scene that shrouded the fact that ten thousand others were chasing and that instead it was just an- other day in, say, 1951. In November 1966, Canadian National 4-8-4 6218 visited Chica- go, running a couple round trips to South Bend, Indiana. On the second day’s chase, snow changed the whole complexion of the trip. With this scene looking out across an In- diana farm field, Jim showed us that a crisp, clear three-quarter view did not have to be part of the equation for an effective shot. In- deed, this could have been the Maple Leaf headed for Toronto in 1951. JIM BOYD PHOTO


Railfanning then was hardly the organized, focused, and well-connected community it is today. Most of us railfans at that time manifested our interest in railroading through model railroading at a club... One evening Jim Boyd waltzed in toting a slide projector. “Hey guys; here’s some slides I took earlier this week.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60