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Description:
Great Northern Railway freight train west of Havre, Montana in 1968. The train consists of boxcars, many of them empty, from a variety of railroads. At the time, two of the northwest's principle commodities, grain and lumber, were typically shipped in boxcars. Today, more specialized covered hoppers and center-beam flatcars have largely supplanted the once-ubiquitous boxcars. The Great Northern Railway was a predecessor of today's BNSF, which now operates this line. On either side of the train are two Montana icons: the wheat field at bottom, and a vast, dramatic sky above. |
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| Classification: |
Railroads in the Landscape (LCSH)
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| Resource Type: |
Image (DCMI Type Vocabulary)
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| Coverage: |
Spatial, west of Havre, Montana; Temporal, 1968 |
| Source: |
David Plowden, Winnetka, Illinois |
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Creator Description:
David Plowden says of himself that he stays one step ahead of the wrecking ball in recording "vanishing America." He started with steam locomotives, and has moved to the many changes he has observed on the North American rural and industrial landscapes. He was born in 1932 in Boston, began learning darkroom techniques at the Putney School in Vermont in 1948, published his first photograph in 1954 (in Trains), graduated from Yale in 1955, worked for the Great Northern as an assistant to the trainmaster in Minnesota, eventually assisted photographer O. Winston Link, and began a full-time professional career in 1960-61. He has more than twenty photography books to his credit. |
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