Friday Fun –– The Gildersleeve Files
Written by David C. Lester, Editor-in-Chief
Union Pacific’s City of Los Angeles still operated in two sections in 1964. Here we see the Pullman section around Sullivan’s Curve in Cajon Pass on July 11, 1964. A Tuscan Red car from the Pennsylvania Railroad is visible in the train in the background. Photograph by Tom Gildersleeve, collection of Center for Railroad Photography & Art.
ATLANTA –– I wrote in my Editor's Notebook column in the January 2026 issue that we have begun a periodic feature called "The Gildersleeve Files."
The Gildersleeve Files will present a series of historic railroad photographs that we will publish as often as we can, depending on space. Tom Gildersleeve is an engineer (not rail) and a longtime and devoted railroad enthusiast and photographer who has been photographing railroads since the 1950s. His works are spectacular and presented in RT&S with the permission of the custodian of these images, the Center for Railroad Photography & Art in Madison, Wisconsin. For those who read our November 2025 issue, you were treated to one of Tom’s most famous images on page 32, the American Freedom Train, made just before dawn on December 22, 1975. Many consider this to be one of the most famous railroad photographs of all time.
The images have been optimized for printing on a professional color printer, and the web versions may not have the level of color saturation, color balance, contrast, shadows and highlights displayed in a professional print. Nevertheless, these images are marvelous, and we believe it’s important for us to pay tribute to this truly legendary photographer.
Santa Fe’s westbound Mail Train rolls through Summit, Calif., on November 16, 1963. Photography by Tom Gildersleeve, collection of Center for Railroad Photography & Art.
In 1994, Union Pacific ran Challenger No. 3985 out to Southern California and operated some excursions that ran between Riverside and Barstow, over Cajon Pass. This is the returning leg of the first one, taken at Summit, Calif., on May 21, 1994. Photography by Tom Gildersleeve, collection of Center for Railroad Photography & Art.
