The making of these photographs was the work of Wallace W. Abbey (1927–2014), a writer and photographer who made his career in railroad journalism and public relations. From his home in Evanston, Illinois, Abbey grew up riding trains and working summer railroad jobs through high school and at college at the University of Kansas, where he received a degree in journalism. During the early 1950s, Abbey was an associate editor for Trains, the nation’s foremost railroad magazine. Its offices were located in downtown Milwaukee, so the Beer Line was a natural subject.

Preserving and presenting these photographs is the work of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art (CRP&A), an arts and education non-profit founded in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1997. In addition to preparing traveling exhibitions, the CRP&A publishes books and the quarterly journal Railroad Heritage, hosts a conference on the campus of Lake Forest College in Illinois each spring, and manages a growing archive of nearly a quarter-million images.

With his education, experience, and artistic talent, Abbey created a remarkable photographic record of railroading that spans the 1940s through the 1990s. With the help of his wife and two daughters, he donated his photography to the CRP&A in 2011. Trains magazine, still going strong from its current offices in Waukesha, helped fund the processing and digitization of the 35,000 slides and negatives. The source material for the exhibition came from the book, Wallace W. Abbey: A Life in Railroad Photography, published by Indiana University Press in 2018. Visit railphoto-art.org to learn more.

Exhibition Staff
Adrienne Evans, archives manager
Kevin P. Keefe, consultant
John P. Kelly, consultant
Scott Lothes, executive director
Colleen O’Keefe, associate archivist
Hailey Paige, exhibitions coordinator
Anne Thomason, consultant
Inga Velten, development director