Iron muse; photographing the Transcontinental Railroad
Glenn Willumson

The construction of the transcontinental railroad (1865-1869) marked a milestone in United States history, symbolizing both the joining of the country’s two coasts and the taming of its frontier wilderness by modern technology. This book provides a look at the production, distribution, and publication of images of the transcontinental railroad.

“One way to approach Glenn Willumson’s impressive book is to imagine yourself standing on the observation platform of a train speeding westward in 1868. Already disappearing from view are traditional ideas about the function of documentary photography, while at the other end of the train, precariously balanced on the cab of the locomotive, a photographer shoots pictures that show how successfully construction of the Transcontinental railroad is proceeding through the rugged western landscape. Willumson’s thoughtful, carefully researched narrative works between these two views of railroad photography, explaining how the passive was gradually being supplanted by the active, but not quite so openly or aggressively as to suggest that the railroad’s record of progress was any less authentic. Which tells us, once again, how effective such images were in selling the nineteenth-century West to the eastern half of the nation.”