Detail from Jack Delano's shot of the C&NW railyards in December 1942, and streamliners City of Denver and City of Los Angeles. View full size.

December 1942. General view of the C&NW R.R. Proviso classification yard at Chicago. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

March 1943. Another night shot by Jack Delano, taken on his Santa Fe rail trip west from Chicago in 1943. His description of this scene: "Activity in the Santa Fe R.R. yard, Los Angeles. Due to blackout regulations, floodlights, switch lights, locomotive headlights and lights on the bridge in background have been shaded to cast light downward. Broad streaks of light are caused by paths of locomotive headlights, thin wavy lines by lamps of switchmen working in the yard." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano. View full size.

March 1943. The Santa Fe Yards at Argentine, Kansas. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano, Office of War Information.

December 1942. Train going over the hump at the Chicago & North Western Proviso Yard. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

December 1942. A young worker at the Chicago & North Western 40th Street shops. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

May 1943. Melrose Park, Ill. Chicago & North Western towerman R.W. Mayberry of Elmhurst at the Proviso Yard. He operates a set of retarders and switches at the hump. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

May 1943. "Nearly exhausted sulfur vat from which railroad cars are loaded. Freeport Sulphur Company at Hoskins Mound, Texas." View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon, Office of War Information.

January 1943. Indiana Harbor Belt switch engine near Calumet Park stockyards at Calumet City, Ill. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

December 1942. A winter afternoon in the North Proviso yardmaster's office, Chicago & North Western Railroad. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano. Click here for a closeup of the poster on the wall.

December 1942. Proviso classification yard of the Chicago & North Western Railroad. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

March 1943. The giant Santa Fe Elevator near Kansas City, demolished in the 1990s, held 10 million bushels of grain. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano, Farm Security Administration/OWI.

April 1943. A.S. Gerdee of 3251 Maypole Street, Chicago, a switchman at the Proviso Yard of the Chicago & North Western Railroad. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano, Office of War Information.

Another bird's-eye view of Eleventh Avenue, a.k.a "Death Avenue," on New York's West Side as captured by the Bain News Service circa 1911. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.

Equestrian signalman on the New York Central's Eleventh Avenue freight line circa 1911. In a 1930 article on the West Side tracks' demise, the New York Times wrote of the "eight men and twenty-four horses comprising the famous 'cowboy troop' [or 'West Side Cowboys'] whose function it has been for years to ride ahead of the puffing locomotives as they wheeled along Death Avenue." The dangerous street-level tracks were eventually replaced by a 1½-mile viaduct, the High Line, that after decades of abandonment is being turned into a long, thin elevated park. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.