The human element F
or many modelers, the finishing touch on a layout is adding humans to the scene: railroaders in locomotive cabs or hooping up train orders; passengers at depots, where they wait (stoical- ly, perforce) for their train; townspeople going about their business. And though those of us
who watch, study, and photograph real trains tend to be locomotive-centric, we recognize that the railroad scene would be sadly sterile and incomplete stripped of railroaders. Actually, we may be- moan the fact that technology has robbed 21st century railroading of much of its human presence and envy modelers their ability to put it back.
These perhaps obvious truths were reinforced for me recently in a handful of ways. One was the Grand Centennial Parade of Trains, staged last May by Metro-North Railroad to help celebrate Grand Central Terminal’s one hundredth birthday. For this event, Metro-North assembled four tracks’-worth of equipment: a few locomotives and numerous cars, most notably sleeper-buffet- lounge observation Hickory Creek, built in 1948 for the 20th Century Limited and thus right at home in Grand Central.
But Metro-North also brought to the event a trio of 20th Century veterans: hostess–a “Century
Girl”–Joan Jennings Scalfini, brakeman Ray Bottles, and conductor David Spellman. To say that the trio upstaged the hardware might be an exaggeration, but not much of one. They wowed the press on preview day, then on the two public days participated in panel discussions and auto- graphed pictures at their table in Grand Central’s Vanderbilt Hall while chatting with fans. Metro-North estimated that 60,000 came to the “Parade,” far more than expected. No doubt a great many of them visited with the veterans, who wore with pride their uniforms: the classic dark blue originals for Bottles and Spellman. Joan Scalfani’s elegant Christian Dior-designed “Century Girl” outfit, complete with hat, in “river mist blue” was recreated for the occasion. The previous fall I’d had a phone call from Ted Ogden of Bowden, West Virginia, who was inquir- ing about a photograph I’d taken of his father–Strat, a long-time Western Maryland employee– forty years earlier and had eventually published in a book that Roger Cook and I wrote on the WM. Ted wanted to buy a print and frame it for his dad as a surprise Christmas present. In August 1972, a time when employees and enthusiasts mingled more easily (especially on the friendly WM), I’d ridden the locomotive cab from Elkins to Laurel Bank and Hickory Lick, all in West Virginia, on WM’s Greenbrier, Cheat & Elk Subdivision. Strat, then an engineer trainee, had taken the throttle on the return leg. We’d had lunch at the boarding house at Laurel Bank and I’d photographed him as he prepared to board the F-units to head back to Elkins. Roger and I did get to know lots of Western Maryland men by name, but many who appeared in the book were unnamed. (One, Ray Harris, I miscaptioned, annoying him and embarrassing me.) Ted had gone through the book with his dad and identified some we hadn’t known; when he called, he gave me their names, linking them with their pictures: Charlie Schoonover, Buck White, John Hanna, Clarence Carr, Jack Harman, Rick Barrick. Now their photographs, taken long ago, have an even greater poignancy. Following and photographing Northeastern railroads in the early and mid seventies typically meant striving to stay even a tiny step ahead of change and decay. Such local favorites as Erie Lackawanna and Lehigh Valley were foundering in bankruptcy, and in the early months of 1976 I was drawn to trackside to experience them before they vanished into what I saw as a faceless Conrail on April 1. I sought to show the railroads at their best, typically taking pictures in scenic locations. However, when I not long ago paged through photographs I made at that time, the one that for me best captured the mood of that moment has no river or mountains in it. I took it on a gray, drizzly day in Lehighton, Pennsylvania, as symbol freight LV-2 changed engine crews. Alco Cen- tury C-628 No. 635 did in fact belong to a class that was a favorite of mine, but this is not an en- gine picture but a portrait of a man carrying a heavy load. More than the crew was changing. The date was March 27, and Conrail was only four days away.
KARL ZIMMERMANN
38
JUNE 2014
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