Excursion Collections
Railroad Collections
hawkinsrails.net / steam
HawkinsRails.net features 50 years of railfan photography, shared by a father and son, with special emphasis on lines and locomotives in the southeastern United States. This page features steam locomotive photographs taken mostly from John's extensive collection of monochrome 120 negatives. Check out the special collections, then look over our sampling of southeastern locomotives. All photographs are by John or Ralph Hawkins unless otherwise noted. See our reprints page to learn more about ordering a reprint or digital file of a particular photograph on this page.
David P. Morgan, 1968
Lucius Beebe & Charles Clegg, The Age of Steam, 1957
Norfolk & Western #475
Baldwin 4-8-0 class M (1906) / Bristol, Va / Sep 1960
Southern #630
Alco 2-8-0 (1904) / Chattanooga, Tn / Aug 1986 / RWH
Tea kettle #1 (below) has little significance in and of itself, strewn as it is among the rusting appliances and scrap metal of a salvage yard along the Mississippi River near New Orleans. But relative to our photo collection, the little 0-4-0 tanker is an important specimen: She's the first locomotive my father ever photographed. The story goes that not long after purchasing their first new car in 1947, dad's family decided to go for a drive and to venture across the Mississippi River on the Huey P. Long bridge -- a massive steel structure named for Louisiana's notorious governer. While following the mighty Mississippi along River Road through Westwego, Louisiana, my father -- in 1948, 15 years old -- spotted the loco in the Westwego Salvage yard. "It was the smallest locomotive I had ever seen," he later recalled. My grandfather pulled over to the side of the road and dad convinced my grandmother to let him take a few photos with the family's Kodak folding camera. Thus began a 60 year interest in railfan photography -- appropriately, I suppose, with little #1.
0-4-0T / Westwego, La / 1948 / JCH
