Once upon a time, to be a railfan in North America meant to make photographs using one of the most famous transparency films of all time — Eastman Kodak’s Kodachrome. I speak in past tense because that time has passed, so much so that the name of this film calls to mind an entire generation of photographers who continue to influence how we in the hobby today judge what makes a “good” railway photo.
For railfans who first made images in this century, film may seem a relic, a way of making photographs that was expensive, cumbersome, and inconvenient. A roll of color film might cost upward of $6, and only bought you 36 frames. Loading and reloading a camera required time and dexterity. Worst of all, there was no way to be sure that a shot was correctly framed or exposed until you sent the rolls off to a developer, paid yet more money, and waited for them to return — sometimes up to two weeks.
It is understandable why most hobbyists today use digital cameras, with their greater economy and instantaneous feedback. Yet film was once the only option, and the king was Kodachrome. Fabled for its rich color palette, deep shadows, and archival quality, the film found favor among landscape photographers, tourists, and especially railfans. This is not to say that everyone shot on Kodak’s signature slide film. Anscochrome was introduced as a direct competitor in the 1940s, offering faster speeds and easier processing. Only years later would photographers discover the unstable dyes would shift to shades of pink — or worse, break down entirely. In the 1980s, Fuji introduced a series of professional-grade films that were as good as, or, arguably, superior to Kodak’s offerings. None, however, came close to the iconic status of Kodachrome. After all, Paul Simon didn’t sing about Fuji Astia.
It was also part of a whole ecosystem within the hobby. While Kodachrome became accessible to most railfans in the late 1940s or early 1950s, most of those images were never published until much later. Color printing remained an expensive process, and except for their covers, most railfan magazines were almost exclusively black & white well into the 1980s. Color slides were traded or sold between fans at swap meets and through magazine ads, and shared in basement slide shows with friends. It wasn’t until Don Ball Jr.’s 1978 book America’s Colorful Railroads introduced the market potential for publishing ’chromes.
Kodachrome is also a marker of an era. While it was introduced in the mid-1930s, it did not become widespread or affordable until the postwar period. Soldiers returning from the war brought with them well-made but attainable single-lens-reflex cameras made in occupied Japan and Germany, becoming a part of the serious railfan’s basic kit. This era lasted through the second half of the last century, a time when railways in North America underwent massive changes. It was on Kodachrome that the transition from steam to diesel power was recorded. It was Kodachrome that captured the decline of once-great roads as they were swallowed up by mergers and bankruptcies. Kodachrome was there as lonely branch lines rolled up their operations, or returned as upstart short lines fighting for traffic and a place in the industry. It was, for all the losses, a time of great color and variety, right up until the film was discontinued in 2009 (and processing ended in 2010). Will we have the same respect and lament in 30 years for our various digital file formats?
—Alexander Benjamin Craghead is a transportation historian, photographer, artist, and author.
