GM&O FA1 738 leads First 28 through Mario, Mississippi on July 11, 1958
When I came upon Steel Wheels Rolling—A personal Journey of Railroad Photography by J. Parker Lamb I snapped it up without much investigation. I did leaf through a couple of the pages—looking at the trains—and scanned the bottom of the cover where it said masters of railroad photography.*
I was expecting more of a how-to-do or a what-worked-for-me technical orientated book than what this book is. There is almost nothing on equipment, film, techniques, rules to follow or what would as an example, separate railroad photography from pet photography. The only technical point in the entire book is on the flyleaf where it was stated the book celebrates—
I was expecting more of a how-to-do or a what-worked-for-me technical orientated book than what this book is. There is almost nothing on equipment, film, techniques, rules to follow or what would as an example, separate railroad photography from pet photography. The only technical point in the entire book is on the flyleaf where it was stated the book celebrates—
…a lifetime of extraordinary railroad photography, compiled some fifty-two years after he first pointed a hand-me-down 116-size Kodak folding camera at a Meridian & Bigbee River 2-8-0 in his hometown of Meridian, Alabama.
The really neat aspect of this book is the fast and seamless journey you go on throughout the United States and Canada with a man who shot a subject he was interested in. He lived in different railway systems so his subjects—both steam and diesel engines with passenger and freight/hopper cars— and their operating conditions varied.
He took a camera with him when he attended university seminars outside his normal areas and used his spare time to document trains, routes, switching yards and the people who made the railways work. His trains are sometimes captured by panning the camera (as on the cover) and sometimes parked in rail yards at night, as in the back dust cover image.
The really neat aspect of this book is the fast and seamless journey you go on throughout the United States and Canada with a man who shot a subject he was interested in. He lived in different railway systems so his subjects—both steam and diesel engines with passenger and freight/hopper cars— and their operating conditions varied.
He took a camera with him when he attended university seminars outside his normal areas and used his spare time to document trains, routes, switching yards and the people who made the railways work. His trains are sometimes captured by panning the camera (as on the cover) and sometimes parked in rail yards at night, as in the back dust cover image.
J. Parker Lamb was born in 1933 and died after a long illness at the age of 91 on May 9, 2025. His lifetime of work is housed in seven collections at the CRP&A/Center for Railway Photography & Art (railroad-art.org).
* Steel Wheels Rolling is the second in the series, the first in the series being One Track Mind by Ted Benson.
* Steel Wheels Rolling is the second in the series, the first in the series being One Track Mind by Ted Benson.
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