I've long been fascinated by John Krause's work. He was able to visit and record for posterity so many of my favorite railroads, both eastern and western, in the halcyon days at the close of the steam era in the 1940s and 50s. As a fellow New Yorker, I have a special love for his photos of steam on the LIRR in the 1950s, (One of Krause's frequent photo spots on that road happens to have been more or less across the street from my high school in Stony Brook, NY, and there is a sequence of shots he took of leased PRR K4s no. 3655 at speed there in 1950 that takes my breath away every time I see it.) His signature talent for combining drama and artistry in composition with deeply familiar settings and locations touches me deeply every time I see his photos. And he seems to have been everywhere, not just in New York and Colorado, but down South on the ET&WNC and various southern short lines as Mal mentions, and even in Cass, WV when it was still the Mower Lumber Co. Over and over, he was somehow always able to be in the right place at the right time, preserving those fleeting moments that would never come again.
As a case in point, consider a photo caption that came to my attention today, from
East Broad Top: To the Mines and Back by Grenard and Kramer:
"On March 23, 1956, the snow-covered siding at Kimmel was witness to the last meet between two narrow gauge freights along the flank of Sideling Hill...The caboose comes abreast of No. 16. A few seconds later, the switch was thrown and No. 16's whistle had called in the rear flagman. Those were the last precious moments for the mingled sounds of two freight trains to echo each other along the mountain ridge."
And who was the photographer waiting there in the snow to record the event? John Krause, of course. [Sorry I can't include the photos here, but I'm sure you can picture them in your mind's eye.] How did he even know to be there?
-Philip Marshall
