Jim Shaughnessy is a revered name among railroad photographers. This collection, the best of his work over a forty-year career, features 170 duotone photographs taken between 1946 and 1988, with an emphasis on the railroad culture of the fifties and sixties. Jeff Brouws--a railroad authority and photo historian--has contributed a biographical essay that traces Shaughnessy's beginnings photographing steam locomotives in his hometown of Troy, New York, to his documentation of the dramatic steam-to-diesel transition, with an emphasis on the northeastern United States and Canada, where the concentration of railroad action and often deep snow resulted in beautiful and unusual images.Not just a compendium of photographs of locomotives, this book covers the whole railroad world--the sheds, tunnels, viaducts, yard stations, and more. It is a wonderful document of what is arguably railroading's most compelling era.