Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.

Santa Fe R.R. westbound freight stopping for water at Melrose, New Mexico. View full size. Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano. This is one of about a thousand pictures Jack took for the Office of War Information in March 1943, riding a freight from Chicago to California. Most of them were in black-and-white. He used a Graflex Speed Graphic press camera that took 4x5 inch film.
I hope we can see all of Jack's pictures he took from Chicago to LA