Great On-Line Photo Collections

[J3a-614]

One of the things that often shows up on Railway Preservation News are links to various on line sources of old photos.  Below are some that may be of interest here:

The first one that's handy is Castle Graphics, which has an interesting collection of images:

http://transport.castlegraphics.com/index.php?cat=3

How often do you find images like this from the Illinois Central:

http://transport.castlegraphics.com/thu ... p?album=34

And how about power from the Kansas City Southern?

http://transport.castlegraphics.com/thu ... p?album=35

That's just a sample to look at.

Another jewel, in this case for traction fans, is the Metro Transportation Library and Archive of the transit system in Los Angeles:

Flickr photo link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibraryarchive/

Some samples:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 7708572712

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 7708572712

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 7531268917

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 7150170718

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 7136781505

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 7136781505

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 7136781505

Among the more intriguing images are these for a proposed subway system in LA. Check out the late 50's styling (actually, 1962), and what appears to be a premonition of the broad gauge equipment of BART:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 6722882335

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 6722882335

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 6722882335

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibra ... 6722882335

All I've done is look at a few images; it looks like there is a huge amount of material available:

General link:

http://www.metro.net/about/library/

http://metroprimaryresources.info/

I first ran into this thing on a West Coast high speed rail site, which occasionally has jokes about steam (in good humor, of course), and there was a bit about a steam-powered bus.  Looking at the Flickr account, I commented that despite an "official" sounding name, it looked like an enthusiast site; it had too much fun stuff to be run by a stuffy government agency. I received from the site's librarian what I consider a nice, pleasant correction, if for no other reason than it revealed so much other material.

"Our online Flickr photo collection is not some transit fan site – we are the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Library & Archive.

"Our archive of nearly 8,000 images in our vast holdings come from the collections of the predecessor agencies for Los Angeles County MTA dating back to the 1880s. The collection is so popular that it has been accessed online more than 1.8 million times in 3 1/2 years.

"We have a 50,000 volume collection (40% of which is found nowhere else in the world), our own YouTube channel, a vast collection of full-text digital documents, and much more.

"Please refer to our website (http://www.metro.net/library) and our Primary Resources Blog (http://metroprimaryresources.info) for more information.

"We also aggregate daily transportation news, much of which concerns California High-Speed Rail, at: http://losangelestransportation.blogspot.com — you may also subscribe to a daily email digest or RSS feed. Finally, you may keep up with transportation leaders' Twitter feeds related to transit and transportation on our Paper.li daily tweet digest at: http://paper.li/metrolibrary/paperli"--Metro Digital Resources Librarian

Again, have fun with your own explorations.

Finally, there is this one, which I stumbled onto while looking for material for 0-10-0 steamers in the HO thread.  If you love Southern region roads, you'll like this place:

http://www.msrailroads.com/

Some sample pages:

http://www.msrailroads.com/IC.htm

http://www.msrailroads.com/Y&MV.htm

http://www.msrailroads.com/B&HS.htm

http://www.msrailroads.com/FC&G.htm

http://www.msrailroads.com/EG&Co.htm

Have fun as you explore, and hopefully, there will be more!