Someone just led me to "Shorpy" which appears to be a website dedicated to high quality vintage photos. They appear to have lots, on many subjects. Searching on keyword 'railroad' turned up about 150 (+/-) photos dating from 1864 to 1943 (at least the ones I noted). Most just workaday photos, but extremely interesting for anyone with an interest in older trains. The site footnote says: "Shorpy.com is a photoblog featuring high-definition images from the first half of the 20th century. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a boy who worked in an Alabama coal mine and ironworks in the 1910s." The link to the first page (of 11) with railroad photos is: http://www.shorpy.com/historical-railroad-and-train-photos There may be other under different keywords, but this is what I turned up on a first pass. Interesting enough that I wanted to share it here. Click on the photos to enlarge and see more info, then there's a further option to view full size. The site is a blog so you can leave comments if you wish. Here's a sample. A 1902 William Henry Jackson photo of a CNW train on a viaduct over the Des Moines River near Boone, Iowa. http://www.shorpy.com/node/4343?size=_original Regards Ed .
Ed, that place is absolutely awesome. There are so many from New York City back before film was even popular. I think some are glass negatives, but the quality rivals today's digital cameras. :tb-biggrin:
I recognized a bunch of the images on that site as part of the FSA work during World War II and Detroit Publishing Company from 1900 onwards. All of these and a great many more are available in larger versions (up to 50MB tiff files in some cases) at the Library of Congress' American Memory website.
