Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The Rail Yards

The Blacksmith Shop at Albuquerque's Rail Yards is currently hosting a crafts, performance and food fair each Sunday from 9:00 to 3:00.  Visitors to the site can also view some of the other buildings that made up the massive Santa Fe locomotive repair shops.





The Santa Fe Railway Shops were Albuquerque's biggest employer for a couple decades.  At the height of their operations in the 1940s they were photographed by Jack Delano under the auspices of the FSA and the OWI.








Delano's assignment from Stryker at the Farm Security Administration and at the Office of War Information was to photograph the railway and the people who worked on it all along the east-west corridor.  The best compilation of his work in New Mexico and at the Albuquerque rail yards is in the Museum of New Mexico Press book, Far from Main Street.  Also featured in the same book is the work in New Mexico by two of Delano's colleagues, Russell Lee and John Collier Jr.

No comments: