Jim Shaughnessy – författare

Jim Shaughnessy: Essential Witness is a comprehensive overview of Shaughnessy’s sixty year as a railroad photographer. Starting in the late 1940s, he began documenting in earnest the rapidly changing railroad scene in the Northeastern United States. His interests and travels also took him to other areas of the country to document the Rio Grande narrow gauge in Colorado and the UP Big Boys in Wyoming, and various locations in Canada. His timing was perfect: he was there to record the dramatic transition between the steam and diesel eras as well as documenting and recording for posterity the workers behind the machines that operated in the depots, roundhouses and back shops of the American railroad environment. Lucius Beebe once described Shaughnessy as ‘a master in the massive effects of black and white.’ The book includes some 150 duotone photographs taken between 1948 and 1970, with the emphasis on the 1950s and 1960s. Images include landscapes, cities and towns; action shots of formidable trains barreling down the tracks; snaps of weary railroad workers; nighttime photos of shadowy enclaves within the railyard; and many more.

Here, in a pictorial history, Jim Shaughnessy turns an eloquent photographer's eye to the Delaware & Hudson, the line that began in 1823 as a canal system to transport Pennsylvania coal to New York State. The D&H extended from Montreal to the coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania. It was active for 170 years, when the route was sold in 1993 to the Canadian Pacific Railway Corporation. The line made early railroad fame by importing from England the famous Stourbridge Lion, the first steam locomotive in America. This occurred during a great expansion into gravity, an interesting phase which took advantage of the mountainous terrain.The nineteenth century saw a period of economic growth and amalgamation, which was shaped by extremely able and ambitiou company presidents. Eventually the D&H advertised itself as "the Bridge Line to New England and Canada." Mountainous terrain around the coal mines challenged the line with heavy grades, so it was natural for one of its presidents, L. F. Loree, to be fascinated with experimental traction power. The many Loree locomotives, leaders in progressive design, are pictured and described herein.Because a good railroad history is always an economic history of a region, this book will surely pleasehistorian, too. Delaware & Hudson is a definitive work, encompassing the mining of the region and detailingthe steamboat operations on Lakes George and Champlain. Syracuse University Press is pleased to reissue thisexemplary study of a railroad. Delaware & Hudson has—and will—continue to raise the standards for allfuture railroad books.