"So," you might ask, "what's with all of these photos and articles about the Pennsylvania Railroad?"

When I was really young, my Mother would take my brother Jim and me for walks along the Pennsylvania Railroad's tracks in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where we'd be serenaded by steam locomotives switching cars back and forth.   It kinda figures we'd end-up there since her father, Ike Burket, was a PRR locomotive fireman and engineman for 50 years.

When I was a little older, I found that I was obsessed with trains.  First, there was the Lionel Lines layout in the basement.  Then there was watching trains.  Then there was photographing trains.  And all-along there was the melancholy sense that something really, really extraordinary had just passed . . . it was the "Age of Steam" . . . and I had just missed it!

Now that I have just signed-up for Social Security, I've found that I have over 1,500 black-&-white photos and color slides of Pennsylvania Railroad trains and equipment ~ and that I took most of them during the eleven-year span between the end of the "Age of Steam" on the PRR and the creation of the Penn Central Railroad (i.e., 1957-1968).  Many of those photos and slides are now published herein.

Over the years, I have also acquired a lot of PRR-related ephemera ~ including a complete collection of "Pennsy" magazines and the first 12 years of "Trains" magazine.  By means of eBay auctions, I've bought large numbers of PRR-related negatives, prints, and slides from the collections or estates of Nathan Dahms, John S. Fisher, Roy Healey, Douglas C. Jones, Raymond C. Laws, Brad Mann, Gary Mittner, Harold K. Vollrath, Henry C. Westenberger, and others.  In a like manner, I've purchased large quantities of "Al Chione" slides from Lewis Fols, Tim Howerter, and Tim Rose.  It's my intent to scan and process, upload and annotate them for both fun and historical reference.

I've also re-published a large number of PRR-related images that were first published in Facebook by the late William E. Burket of Altoona and the late Edward Kaspriske of Laural Run, Pennsylvania.

Technical Note: The Railroad Picture Archives website was out of service from 13 November 2024 through 15 December 2024.  Before the "blackout" began, I had uploaded over 11,700 items into the Archives; when it was over, there were fewer than 9,400 items remaining. In the interim, over 2,300 items had disappeared ~ including individual photos, pages within albums, even entire albums.  Captions have been corrupted.  Numerous locomotive builder's numbers are now unrecoverable.  I will do what I can to reconstitute identifiable photos and albums, but many items that were once available are now gone. 

Long live the Pennsylvania Railroad, if only on film!

Monday, 04 July 2016

Revised: Tuesday, 25 July 2017

Revised: Friday, 09 March 2018

Revised: Monday, 06 August 2018

Revised: Sunday, 17 March 2019

Revised: Tuesday, 01 0ctober 2019

Revised: Thursday, 03 September 2020

Revised: Monday, 15 March 2021

Revised: Wednesday, 11 May 2022

Revised: Sunday, 31 July 2022

Revised: Thursday, 01 June 2023

Revised: Sunday, 05 January 2025