Mystery Picture

[NW Mailing List]

Sorry for the overlong discussion that follows.

Indeed, the railroad made and provided duplicate 4x5 transparencies to folks like Vanishing Vista, various post card companies (Meyer) comes to mind and some others, over the years. One of the photographers, I believe it was Aubrey Overstreet complained to me that none of those folks ever bothered to return the loaned transparencies to the photographic services department. This was a fairly common problem, over the years, with people borrowing negatives and such to get prints made on their own. 

One person, a clerk (now deceased) who worked within the railroad, not the photographic services, but was a photographer, "borrowed" quite a few negatives, glass plates, etc. over the years, to the staff's knowledge, none were returned. How we got to that conversation on that, now 35 years ago, was I was looking for negatives of snow pictures with steam. The process in those days was look through the master file books, find a print you liked, write the negative number down, go to the file and pull the negative, after the first five or six were missing, I went and made a list of about 25, then went looking, every single negative gone. That is when I was told how this person had borrowed the negs over the years and they simply never came back. I followed up years later, the now retired clerk had nothing left, had either tossed the stuff, or given it away.

We'd think that common practice would be to shoot both black and white and 4x5 Kodachrome of scenes, however, this was really rarely done, Kodachrome was expensive, and unless it was specifically requested for calendar work, or magazine cover work. The photographic services department worked most specifically for the Magzine and Public Relations department, and only rarely went out on their own just to shoot train pictures without specific requests. So, basically, for every color transparency, I'd guess there were at probably about 1000 black and white negatives. 

Certain photos were so in demand over time, that duplicate color negatives were made of some, to allow photographic services to make color prints on their own, but that did not come along until the mid 1970s. A couple of the shots that come to mind are the 602 on the turntable, the 2141 with the eastbound coal train near Ripplemead, and the big three shot west of Shaffers Crossing.

Back to this shot of Jimmy's, it was very likely requested to be shot in color for what is called the "executive calendar" which are the full color, 12 sheet calendars. Since I don't have copies of all the calendars, I don't know if this was used this way or not, but it likely would have been the 1944 issue, if anyone has that, by 1945, it likely would not have been important enough to use that way.

The issue of printing them in reverse, and retouching the lettering was done fairly often, J. D. Kanode was a master retoucher and readily could recreate the lettering with no problem. Again, probably someone in another department wanted a print for a specific use with the train going from right to left, perhaps for use as decoration in a coach and ordered the print specific. If the request was for something like that, a print was made, either 8x10, occasionally 11x14 and it was retouched, using masking material, an airbrush, and a set of material, known as "Gamma Range Grey" which was pigment specifically for photographic retouching, came in tubes sort of like oil paint, seven different shades of gray from very dark to very light. I've done it with stuff as small as Polaroid black and white prints to remove reflections in mirrors, highlight darker areas, etc. It was long before Photoshop had ever been thought of. The retouched print would be taken back to the copy stand, and a 4x5 or 8x10 negative was made to make further prints from. This negative would be a different negative number than the original, but would frequently note on the envelope or file, something like (for original print see negative XXXXXX." My suspicion is this was reversed for printing to go inside a coach over time. Usually, you can tell the retouched images, not so much from the retouching, but the copy negatives tended to lose some details in the shadows and highlights.

I have not made a big search in my files, so I did not come up with a copy negative number for this print. Usually, when I was getting prints in the day, I rarely made the prints of stuff like this, simply because it was not an original image.

Sorry to bore you all.

Ken Miller

On Dec 28, 2012, at 9:44 AM, NW Mailing List wrote:


> Its my understanding that they were dupe transparencies. Ken Miller jump in here.

>  

> Larry Evans

> Kenova, WV

> ----- Original Message -----

> From: NW Mailing List

> To: NW Mailing List

> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2012 6:51 AM

> Subject: Re: Mystery Picture

> 

> I have the Vanishing Vistas card with this photo.  The location is given as Troutville and the engine is 2123.  The solid train of tank cars is to transport oil by rail during World War II because German submarines had disrupted the transport of oil along the Atlantic seaboard.  The peak year for the oil trains was 1943.  So the correct orientation of the photo is with the passing siding in the foreground, on the engineer's side of the locomotive.  The Vanishing Vistas image (copyright 1972) was made from large size transparencies taken by N&W's company photographers.  There may be a b&w version of this scene in the Virginia Tech image collection.  

>  

> Back at the time these cards with N&W images were produced, there was some question whether the borrowed transparencies were ever returned to the railroad.  I know they were transparencies because a Vanishing Vistas representative himself told me so at a convention long ago.

>  

> --Rick Morrison

> ----- Original Message -----

> Subject: Mystery Picture

> 

>     I was over at my son's house on Christmas Eve and went downstairs to see his tree. While there, I noticed he had a picture of a train hanging over his fireplace mantle. The room was kind of dark and there were some tall decorations on the mantle hiding some of the picture. As I looked at the picture, it seemed that I somehow should know where it was taken.

>     I went closer trying to recognize the location but it didn't hit me at first. It seemed familiar, but, I just couldn't place the location. I then got involved in conversation with my son and other family members, but, I kept getting drawn back to the picture. I moved in closer and removed some of the decorations that were obscuring the locomotive. That's when it hit me... this photo has been printed in reverse. The road number was wrong (5123), plus, the throttle linkage and air pumps were on the wrong side.

> 

> 

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