Steinheimer Photos Donated to Wisconsin Center

The photography of the late Richard Steinheimer has been donated to the Center for Railroad Photography & Art.

The collection includes 30,000 slides, black and white prints, scans of photographs, and black and white negatives.

Steinheimer’s work began to emerge in the 1940s and gained traction in such magazines as Trains and Railfan & Railroad in the 1950s, both of which had different names in their early years of publication. Trains has published more than 400 of Steinheimer’s photographs in its pages.

The Center, which is based in Madison, Wisconsin, said in announcing its acquisition of the collection that Steinheimer was considered by some to be the “Ansel Adams” of the railroad photography craft. 

Steinheimer died at age 81 in Sacramento, California, on May 4, 2011. Much of his work focused on railroads in the West and featured trains amid dramatic landscapes.

His photographs also appeared in more than 70 books, including Backwoods Railroads of the West, The Electric Way Across the Mountains, and A Passion for Trains: The Railroad Photography of Richard Steinheimer.

During his career, Steinheimer also was a commercial photographer in Silicon Valley, creating images for such technology companies as Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, and Apple.

Tags: Center for Railroad Photography and Art, Railroad photographs, Richard Steinheimer