Beebe and Clegg – A lifelong partnership and passion for Railroads and preserving traces of the American past … “pioneers of railroad photography”
As well as Mixed Train Daily, they also wrote Narrow Gauge in the Rockies, illustrated with their own and others photography as well as some paintings and sketches.
It is easy reading their words and the superb black and white photos (some of them then and now ones) to get lost in time. The overall tone is one of melancholy sadness mourning long vanished trains and lines that came and went with the fortunes of various mines.
You can read this for free if you log in at Archive.org
https://archive.org/details/narrowgaugeinroc0000luci/mode/1up
I enjoyed the Railroad sketches by Muriel S. Wolle. You can discover her books of sketches of the fast vanishing mining settlements in Colorado on Archive.org here:
https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Muriel+Sibell+Wolle%22
In Beebe and Cleggs’s book, there are also interesting photos of minor stations such as the oddly named Crested Butte, photographed here with husband and wife station agent, family and staff in 1888.
The mining railway has gone but Crested Butte station still stands, now a meeting room
The Galloping Goose “Rail car” is similar to the one pictured in Mixed Train Daily that led me to discover Bowden, my ‘adopted’ town in Georgia.
Image source: Beebe and Clegg, Mixed Train Daily
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2020/10/20/railcars-and-rural-america-mixed-train-daily/
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One of the larger than life characters featured in this Rockies book is Otto Mears, Railroad pioneer and “Pathfinder of the San Juans” through the Rockies (1840-1931).
He emigrated / arrived in America during the 1859 California Gold Rush and in time to serve in the American Civil War from 1861-64.
Wikipedia source : “Mears then served in the 1st California Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War, fighting a Navajo uprising under the leadership of Kit Carson. After mustering out in August 1864 in the Mesilla Valley in New Mexico, Mears moved to Santa Fe …”
Mears started by building toll roads between mining and mountain settlements, some of which were conveniently later converted to narrow-gauge railways.
The book is full of heroic stories of railroads builders battling against the elements in the Wild West era.
You get a snapshot from these passages of the mournful side of the book as railroad activities in many distant mining settlement areas wound down to near oblivion.
I thought this description of skis as “Norwegian Shoes” was interesting, footwear for the dog sled mailmen in the snow.
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And finally …
Shhhh! A curious link with Hiroshima and the atom bomb project – ‘yellow cake’
Like Mixed Train Daily, this is a well written and illustrated book, one well worth losing yourself in for several hours at a time.
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 6 January 2024.
Sidetracked 