Cataloguing Photos Digitally Versus Manually Has Made All The Difference!

FYI

A matched Santa Fe F7A/F7B loco set on public display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento at its Railfair ‘99 extravaganza

I used to keep my prints (analog photos) in envelopes that were stashed neatly. What these prints were not was organized in any meaningful way. That all changed.

Painstaking was the process in most cases of searching for a representative photo to include, say, with a particular designated to-be-published article. That method was so primitive and I have no qualms about admitting that.

So what I’m in the process of doing now is going through all of my prints looking for those of sufficient quality suitable for online publishing and scanning those and placing (albeit a digital facsimile) in a file folder on my computer. Each is now saved and identified accordingly.

In this print, one among many in my collection, is depicted a Southern Pacific mixed freight train rolling tonnage south through Fresno, California past the former downtown SP depot. If you look closely, you’ll notice a member of the locomotive crew leaning out the window

Such computer file-folder storage allows me to skim through the prints much more easily and swiftly than what was possible when these were stored in envelopes.

The digitization of such pics is a time-saver. Wow! What a difference!

Digitization of such also allows me to reasonably quickly determine if there is a representative photo I do not have in stock, so to speak, one that I can include with a given post I intend to publish at All About Trains. In lieu of, I’ll do an online Internet search to try to find a rendering that is appropriate, fitting, suitable — take your pick. That said, I will use my own photos as much as I can.

Though what I have just put down digitally in print, is probably no big deal to most. What this process has enabled me to do is to bring me more up to speed digitally speaking as well as to speed things up. The exercise is ongoing.

A photo from my collection I have labeled “After the storm.” The pic was taken at sunset after a rainstorm that had moved through the area. That’s the State Route 198 overcrossing of the former Southern Pacific mainline in California’s central San Joaquin Valley off in the distance

That all said, All About Trains probably won’t win any awards for the production work being done here, nor am I expecting it to. Winning awards isn’t what I’m after. Producing and delivering a quality product, on the other hand, is.

Updated: Jan. 8, 2025 at 8:28 a.m. PST.

All material copyrighted 2025, Alan Kandel. All Rights Reserved.