Jim Scribbins (1928–2014)

[excerpted from trains.com online obituary]
Scribbins dedicated a substantial part of his life to chronicling the railroad that in 1948 hired him as a ticket agent. He worked in the company's Milwaukee depot until the advent of Amtrak, then moved on to other jobs within the company until retiring in 1985 with 37 years on the payroll.

Few writers and photographers of the postwar generation can equal Scribbins' achievements. His masterpiece, The Hiawatha Story, a history of the Milwaukee Road's famed passenger trains, was first published by Kalmbach in 1970 and went on to several printings, most recently by the University of Minnesota Press. He also wrote a complementary volume, The 400 Story, about rival Chicago & North Western's passenger fleet, released by PTJ Publishing in 1982 and also now available from University of Minnesota. There were other books, too, including Milwaukee Road Remembered (Kalmbach, 1991), Milwaukee Road in its Hometown (Kalmbach, 1997), and The Milwaukee Road: 1928-1985 (Heimburger House, 2001).

In 1971, Scribbins won the Award of Merit for Distinguished Service from the Wisconsin State Historical Society for The Hiawatha Story. In 2013, the Railway & Locomotive Society honored him with its Gerald M. Best Senior Achievement Award, as part of its annual Railroad History Awards series.

Scribbins also amassed scores of bylines in Trains and Classic Trains magazines and earned hundreds of photo credits in a host of publications.

Scribbins was an accomplished photographer, especially of the principal roads that crossed his home state of Wisconsin: the Milwaukee Road, the C&NW, and the Soo Line. A retrospective of his photography appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of Classic Trains. His collection of thousands of negatives and slides has been given to the Milwaukee Road Historical Association.

For years after his retirement, Scribbins volunteered hundreds of hours to the Humanities Department of the Milwaukee Public Library, cataloging a large portion of his employer's corporate archives.