The Illinois Railway Museum (IRM) is a wonderful repository of American railway equipment and artifacts.
Last month, photographer John Gruber and I spent a couple of hours wandering around, photographing and traveling on IRM’s preserved trains.
John has an on-going exhibit of his finest Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee photographs in IRM’s East Union station.
He asked if I could make a few photos of him surrounded by his photography.
Lumix LX7 digital photo, partially desaturated for effect.John Gruber surrounded by his North Shore photos at the East Union station.Frisco 2-10-0 1630 made a cameo appearance.
Back in the day, John worked with an iconic Nikon F single lens reflex. Today, he carries a Canon EOS 7D. Both have served him well. Right John?
As we were leaving we crossed paths with Trains Magazine editor, Jim Wrinn.
“Small world!”
Jim Wrinn greets John Gruber.
If you are planning a trip to Illinois Railway Museum, be sure to check John’s photos!
In the 1950s and 1960s, My father made a project of photographing the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee, the distinctive interurban electric line connecting it’s namesakes.
Last month, John Gruber and I paid a visit to the Illinois Railway Museum at Union, Illinois. Like my father, John had focused on the North Shore. He made hundreds of excellent photographs that distilled the spirit of the railway.
North Shore was before my time, but I feel that I know the line thanks to my dad’s and John’s photographs, which were featured in books by the late William D. Middleton.
The railway may be gone 55 years, but key pieces of it’s equipment survive.
I made these digital views of preserved North Shore cars at IRM using my FujiFIlm X-T1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit lens. This flat-field super wide-angle lens is well suited to making images in the tight quarters of IRM’s car barns.
John Gruber has an on-going exhibit of his finest North Shore photography in the East Union Station at IRM. This will be subject of another Tracking the Light post.
Sometimes the medium fits the image in more ways than one.
Earlier this month, John Gruber and I visited the Illinois Railway Museum at East Union.
Among the photos I exposed that afternoon, was this digital black & white of a recreated vintage passenger train simmering at the East Union station.
Not real black & white exposed on film, but a camera created black & white JPG.
FujiFilm X-T1 with 12mm Zeiss Touit lens.
The scene emulates a classic view of a steam locomotive and heavy weight cars at a country station, the sort of scene that was once prevalent across North America.
The photo carries the spirit of a vintage photograph, yet it was exposed using modern techniques to distill the essence of the elements of scene now long gone.
It is just a view of a museum, but it lets us step back, maybe to a happier, simpler time.
Last week I traveled with John Gruber to the Illinois Railway Museum at Union. John needed to deliver some material in relation to his North Shore photo exhibit, and he wanted me to expose a few images of him with his photographs.
Between 1960 and 1963, John made a project of documenting the last years of operation of the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee interurban electric line.
North Shore was an intensive electric line that connected the Chicago Loop (trains served downtown using the rapid transit ‘L’—[elevated line]) with Milwaukee, Wisconsin via Chicago’s northern suburbs. The line was well known for its articulated streamlined speedsters called Electroliners and its electrically cooked hamburgers known as Electroburgers. Operations concluded in January 1963.
John’s work is iconic. He exposed thousands of North Shore photographs and his photography goes well beyond ordinary images of the trains. He focused on people as well as machines, and preserved a feel for this unusual railway in motion.
Johns work was prominently featured in the pages of Trains magazine and in books such as those by the late William D. Middleton.
His current exhibit can be seen in the waiting room of the East Union station at IRM. It will be on display through the end of 2016.
Of course, while we were at IRM, we took the opportunity to travel the line, and visit some of the historic equipment (which includes several of North Shore’s cars).
In addition to a variety of digital photos, I exposed these black & white images with my Leica.
John Gruber at IRM. Exposed on Ilford Pan F using a Leica 3A with Nikkor f3.5 35mm lens.Exposed on Ilford FP4 black & white film using a Leica 3A with Nikkor f3.5 35mm lens.Exposed on Ilford FP4 black & white film using a Leica 3A with Nikkor f3.5 35mm lens. (image cropped).
For more information on the Illinois Railway Museum see: http://www.irm.org
