Follow the above link to a few of my current-day railroaders portrait photographs captured at the Strasburg Railroad last weekend.
Not character actors or models, these are a small portion of the very talented men and women who make Strasburg one of the premier steam operations and mechanical departments in the country.
The featured locomotive is Norfolk & Western #475, dressed up as #382 for the Lerro Productions charter.
N&W #382, scrapped long ago, was the motive power of the Virginia Creeper from the Abington Branch made famous by O. Winston Link.
My favorite is Jenny in her “Rosie the Riveter” outfit. That young lady’s done her homework, it’s spot-on, from the bandanna to the herringbone twill overalls.
Precisely the problem I had seeing these. I was reminded of one of those stories of Hollywood where a star supposed to play a farm wife was put in custom-tailored costume plaid shirt and jeans for thousands of dollars (and those were Bretton Woods $35-an-ounce-of-gold dollars) instead of just finding worn or at least off-the-shelf clothes that sorta fit … as a real farm wife would have worn. All these people look not as if they came from work but are wearing costumes or attending a steampunk cosplay convention - even after one day’s wear around working steam and subsequent washing they would not be so perfectly clean and straight looking. And if candidly shot on the job in ‘30s fashion their complexions wouldn’t be so scrubbed and neat — these look as posed and trim as school pictures.
At least the Trevithick Day girl had some smudging applied to her face to ‘get the feel’ a bit better…
This isn’t a nitpick (or really any kind of complaint against the Strasburg people, who really walk the walk as well as any historic railroaders did), just a note on believable verisimilitude.
Now don’t take it the wrong way - the guys and gals at Strasburg are real railroaders. I just chuckled at the super clean (and new) bibs. The same crap we give guys here when they get shiny and clean clothes. Kind of a tradition. I’ll just place these photos in the same category as the “headlight polishing” one.
Nah, they’d need lots of gears superglued to their hats for that. Or huge goggles. Or a fursuit.
Did I state in my original post that I was trying to accurately and/or historically recreate portraits from the 1930’s? Or did I say they were portraits of current day railroaders?
FYI: image #2 is of the steam locomotive engineer that day, images #3 & #6 are of the mechanics on lunch break from performing heavy repairs on Great Western 90, #5 was the train’s conductor.
Yes, they’re not quite as “out on the line” as the OWL’s photos were, so you don’t get the grime, but come on, they’re spectacular photos! And I agree, you don’t usually show up for a portrait wearing rags. [;)]