I have been absolutely amazed by the John Barriger National Railroad Library Flickr photos. What a unique look at railroading in the 30’s - 40’s
.http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/sets/
It is a minor inconvenience that the photos are not identified by location and some are flipped backwards. This is an amazing undertaking by the Barriger library.
Ed
Looks like the images are digitized film slides and the person that did the digitizing decided to put the writing on the edges of the slides “up” (toward the camera) so they could be easily read, not realizing that the writing was for the person loading the slide projector from behind to read and that the image would be reversed by the projector.
Yikes ! 7 million great photos of train stuff and no description of what they are or where the photo was taken, this relegates these photos almost useless, plus writing in large white letters some numbers in the middle of the photo.
Oh there are captions and diagrams and photos arranged by trip in the scrapbooks. Even then, we don’t have a caption for every photo.
What’s online are the copy negatives. Made from the original nitrate negatives that Mr. Barriger saved and were starting to decay and had become extremely hazardous in the 1990s. Not every negative survived to this point and as you will probably see, some negatives degraded but were still duplicated.
This is just the very first step to getting this collection online. We have staff who are available to answer questions and we will eventually be posting the scrapbooks online as a unit. Also we’re seeing a lot of crowd-sourcing for information on the photos. Captions and other actions such as replacing bad negatives with scans of prints will come later.
We’re really happy with the response we’re getting from the photos and hope everyone continues to enjoy them.
Take Care
-Nick Fry
Curator
John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library
I agree. Add in the photos that are upside down (never mind reversed or just crooked) and it’s a mess.
Even if those creating the archive didn’t have the information, it would be nice if there were a feedback mechanism so those who do recognize a given location could have that information added to each image.
It should be up to the actual and official owner of the pictures to either do it him/herself or appoint someone to officially organize and sort. I can identify about 80% of the DL&W files but not date them. I haven’t opened the rest to see what’s in them. The worst thing would be, for the sake of accuracy and calm, is to have everybody taking shots at doing it…we’d get all kinds of confusion and maybe even misinformation… (Even if “officially” done, there could be misinformation but at least that would be a clearing house for making things right.)
You guys are a tough crowd. I am thrilled to have access to this unique and historic treasure.
Part of the intrigue is trying to determine the location of the photo. Yes, some of the photos are flipped or upside down. Would we be better off without access?
Ed
Clicking around, the owners indicate they are working on the problems we’ve mentioned.
Well, we can be a little fussy. [swg]
Given the quantity of images, some slip-ups are a given, but a brief glance over a page of images should indicate that something is amiss. I’ve got a nag-ware program on my computer that will flip images - just a day doing so would probably cure 99% of those.
The labelling may go a little deeper - it’s possible that some (or many) images lacked identification. If that’s the case, then some form of feedback would help make the resource a little more authoritative. Some of the fun is trying to figure out where the pictures were taken. Ironically, one picture that I was able to identify almost immediately was already labelled…
These images are a fantastic resource, and we are lucky to have them available. It can only go up from here.
Well at least these folks are trying to make this stuff accessible. It’s a start and Nick’s tribe is out soliciting for more before it gets lost*. For all the $$$ spent on the preservation of shiny toys, there is much too little effort spent on preserving the record(s) and images of the past in a railroad sense.
For the buttonpushers out there looking for instant gratification - too bad. (don’t see where you are any help or donating your time) What Barriger Library is doing is a process that will take time.
*(seen that and talked to Nick)
What a great collection!
Don’t like how they look? Download them and tweak them in photoshop yourself. I’ll take quantity over quality any day for stuff like this!
Again, our thanks to everyone who is enjoying the photos. The decision to go with what we had wasn’t taken lightly, but the alternative would have been for these images to be sitting on a hard drive in my office, unavailable to even our on-site patrons at the time. So, we posted and we’re using the Aviary tool in Flickr to flip and crop.
Once we finish with these negatives we’ll start the rather laborious process of pulling scanned copies of the prints off of the scans of the scrapbook pages that include captions and trip information. New sets will be created arranging them by trip, just as Mr. Barriger did in the 1940’s when he and his secretaries began these scrapbooks. (We’ll still keep the road name sets, it’s easier for some people to just bask in their favorite railroad that way.) Also this will NOT delete the existing comments posted on the photos that are up now. We can replace the images without deleting the record.
Right now I’m on the fence about where to start with the scrapbooks. Either we go with railroads that had no copy negatives and therefore didn’t even make this upload or we go straight through alphabetically. I’m leaning on doing some gap-filling first as some lines like the W&LE, P&WV and UP are under-covered. There are also several short lines and terminal lines that have no copy negatives. This may change based on discussions I have with the person who will be doing the work.
If you’d like a more exhaustive list of the railroads covered, go to:
Hopefully we can put this project to bed by the end of CY 2014 and go to the next project on Flickr. We may need a second Terabyte of space though. (
Hi All
It is an amazing collection.
Considering how recently it has been digitized and put on the web, the commentary forthcoming on the right sidebar so far is quite comprehensive. I won’t be at all surprised to see the so far un-described and ‘disoriented’ pictures reversed, etc.
As Mr Fry pointed out this is just the start. His methodology, as he explained it, going forward makes all kinds of sense IMO. I’m sure there are enough people out in cyberspace who can comment collectively on every picture there.
It will take time for them to see these pictures and add their comments. Mr Fry is one smart curator. My hat is off to him…
Charlie
Chilliwack, BC
I cannot stay away from this collection. A weekend highlight for me was to find the hometown Olney, Il depot on the B&O collection (page 10, photo 546). I learned from the photo there was a passing siding at the depot and was able to see a photo of the tower which protected the IC branchline (which I grew up near).
Further, the photo was taken from the rear of an eastbound train with a passenger train in the siding. With the help of a 1946 Official Guide, my “best guess” is that Barriger was on the EB National Limited and it was the Dipomat in the siding.
I had a similar positioned photo at the Lawrenceville, Il depot (which I took in 1975)…what a great way to track “progress” thru the years.
I trust these photos will be “fixed” and there are enough people who are adding locations to the comments.
Love the collection.
ed
Thanks, Ed
For posting the links to the Barriger Library Photo Collection.
Kudos to Nick Fry for the work to get a fascinating historical photo collection posted on the " NET".[bow]
I went to the album labeled for the Katy (MKT RR); I found photos of buildings long gone in Southeast Kansas. Not much left there these days, except for foundations now. The huge MKT Backshops there are just a small portion of what they once were.
I just took a peek at the first page of the Milwaukee Road and the photos there (small sample) were outstanding. I think Mr. Barriger’s camera equipment took a leap forward.
Been going photo by photo thru the ATSF shots.
Once upon a time in 1966 I rode the Santa Fe from LaJuanta to Kansas City and have vague memories of the station in LaJuanta. Hopefully will be able to see that.
Ed
The old El Otero Harvey House bit the dust by then and the new contemporary yellow brick structure just replaced it. (Since about 1954) The only surviving piece of the old Harvey house to survive was the REA/US Mail transfer garage that now houses signal and bridge dept offices west of the current depot.
I was travelling thru St. Louis today and stopped at the Barriger Library. Nick Fry was there and we chatted, he is doing a great job with the photos.
A quick word about the library. It is an amazing collection of books, primarily reference material on the operations, finances, and corporate records of the mid 1900s. What really appealed to me was the complete collection of Official Guides. My father talked of taking the Illinois Central passenger trains out of our hometown of Dundas, Il in the 1920s. I looked up and was able to see the schedules.
We only stayed about 20 minutes and then resumed our trip to Oklahoma. This is a great reference for historians and interested people of the industry. I will be back.
Ed
Thank you for all of your efforts. I’m seeing Western Maryland pictures, such as the Challenger and Potomac at the Maryland Junction coaling tower, that I have never seen before. Truly a treasure trove of railroading history.
Poppyl