Beebe & Clegg: Their Enduring Photographic Legacy

Adapted from the book of the same title by John Gruber and John Ryan assisted by Mel Patrick, featuring photographs from the Collection of the California State Railroad Museum Library & Archives, published 2018 by the Center for Railroad Photography & Art, Madison, Wisconsin.

Lucius Beebe was a chronicler of New York “high society” with what was then a very unusual hobby: photographing trains. In 1938 he published the first of what are generally called: railfan books, books that were mostly photographs of locomotives and trains with little text beyond the captions. Amazingly, these books sold well, creating a market which continues to grow.

In 1945, he was joined by his life partner, Charles Clegg and together they roamed the United States photographing trains and producing over two dozen books until Beebe’s death in 1966.

In 2016, Clegg’s sister, Ann Clegg Holloway, donated the Beebe-Clegg archives to the California State Railroad Museum. In 2018 the Center for Railroad Photography & Art published the book from which our show was created.