Jim Shaughnessy Essential Witness

Sixty Years of Railroad Photography

Author  Jim Shaughnessy and Kevin P. Keefe
Jim Shaughnessy Essential Witness

A comprehensive survey of master railroad photographer Jim Shaughnessy’s images of the railroad in North America in the transitional era from steam locomotives to diesel- powered engines

Jim Shaughnessy is an essential witness to six decades of change in North American railroading, from the late 1940s into the twenty-first century. His photographic achievement is one of the pinnacles of railroad photography as a genre, which he, along with others of his generation, raised to the level of art, worthy of consideration beyond the world of trains and the interest of rail fans.

The early years of his career coincided with the dramatic shift in the railroad industry from the steam locomotive to the diesel engine. During those transition years of the 1940s…