Living with Steam
features the authentic sounds of Trains and Railroad Operations in Buffalo and Western New York.
Each episode contains recordings originally made in the field on a wire recorder by John M. Prophet III from 1948-1955.
The recordings you’re going to listen to in the Living with Steam podcast are very unique and equally rare. Beginning in 1948 and continuing into the mid-1950s, John M. Prophet III captured a piece of American history that neither he nor the rest of the world thought would ever disappear; the common presence of the steam powered railroad in American society.
Beginning in the mid-1930s, John began capturing steam locomotives and other railroad paraphernalia in action with a still camera. He soon turned to using a 16mm movie camera to continue gathering footage for his love of trains; primarily the Pennsylvania Railroad, which he was considered an expert of during his lifetime.
Growing up, his grandfather and father owned and operated a very prosperous canning company in Mt. Morris, New York… John’s hometown. The family business was served by the Pennsylvania Railroad, and this is perhaps the reason why John was so enamored by the Pennsy from a very early age. He spent quite a bit of time at with his father and grandfather at the factory taking in the sights and sounds of tremendous stream engines and the trains they pulled. Incidentally, the patriarchs of the family were also named “John M. Prophet.” This is why John is the “III.”
The Prophet family were well-to-do to the point where John had pretty much anything he wanted. However, he was NOT spoiled since John was the oldest of three children in his family. But in order to indulge in his love for anything to do with trains, John always tried to seek out the best technology had to offer at that time. Money didn’t seem to be a hinderance in obtaining what he wanted in order to get the job done.
For example, John was one of the first in his class to own a car; which meant that he was free to travel anywhere he wanted in order to photograph or shoot movies of trains. Keep in mind that during the 1930s, when John was in his early 20s, trains were everywhere. It was how America moved. It was impossible to go to any town or city in the Eastern United States and not see the tracks of one or several railroads serving these locations. For a railfan, it was a perfect time to be alive.
While most kids had inexpensive Kodak “Brownie” cameras, John had a “large-format” camera that captured images on 3”x4” negatives. These were the types of cameras used by Press Photographers of the day. As good as these cameras were at capturing breathtaking images, they were often bulky and heavy. When Kodak introduced its new “Kodak 35” in 1938, the first American-made 35mm camera, John was one of the first to own one.
Taking it one step further, in order to capture movies during this period of time, most people had small cameras that used the 8mm format. The duration for each roll of film was around 2 minutes or less, and cameras operated by winding them like a clock. For each “wind” you were able to capture 15 seconds of footage. John had a Kodak Cine 16mm movie camera which allowed him to shoot movie clips in excess of 1 minute in length at a much sharper resolution.
It’s because of this “excessiveness” that his movies and still images of railroads around the Western New York and Pennsylvania areas are some of the finest ever seen. Keep in mind that Prophet wasn’t using any of these “professional” formats to capture images for posterity. He simply wanted the best for his hobby and figured this was the way to obtain it. Again… to John, “railfanning” was a hobby and nothing more.
In 1948, Prophet began what was considered to be his finest work but one that would remain hidden for many years; sound recordings of steam trains in Buffalo and Western New York. Prophet purchased a "portable" Webster-Chicago wire recorder and set out to capture what he thought would never go away; the steam engine in regular railroad service. Like his movies and still images, he wasn't making these recordings for posterity. He was making them for his own enjoyment. Little did he know that in just a few short years, steam locomotives would be replaced by diesels, and the railroads in Western New York as a whole would soon begin to disappear as well.
Before you listen to the recordings contained in the Living with Steam podcast, it is important to realize how difficult it was to capture these sounds. The wire recorder was a cutting-edge technology during this period of time yet it was very fragile. The recording medium was a microscopic steel thread that was prone to constant jamming and snapping. One false move and 1000 feet of this thread would fly off the take-up reel of the recorder and get into a tangle closely resembling a bird's nest. The result of this common occurrence would be a complete loss of the recording because it was impossible to untangle the mess.
Prophet tried very hard to make all of his recordings where there was some source of power for the recorder. However, some locations were very remote thus creating a need for an alternative power source. Prophet purchased a power "converter" in 1951 that took the 6 volts DC from his car battery (they were 6 volts at that time) and switched it to the AC voltage needed to power the recorder.
John chose his recording location sites carefully in that he always tried to find a place to "plug in". Using the converter was not at all in his best interest because the recorder itself weighed almost 60 pounds and the converter weighed in at close to 100 pounds. That, along with the heavy cable needed to connect the two units, made remote recordings an arduous task. The converter also introduced another problem that gave John many headaches; any recording made with it introduced 60 cycle hum.
In the early 1940s, John became and employee of the New York Central Railroad as a clerk in their freight offices at Buffalo Central Terminal. This gave John pretty much unlimited access to NYC facilities because he was given an employee pass that allowed him to ride any NYC train for free or at a considerable discount. The pass also gave him access to NYC’s interlocking towers, where, incidentally, many of his friends worked as tower operators. John simply had to show up with his wire recorder and take a seat near a window facing the railroad tracks and put a microphone out the window. Often, he would spend an entire 8-hour shift with one of his friends hanging out in the tower recording almost everything that passed by.
John made his first recordings at Bay View (BV) Tower in Blasdell, NY in 1948. By 1953, he was getting tired of the wire recorder and its limited capabilities. I’m sure John lost a great many of his recordings due to mechanical failure of either the wire spools or the machine itself. By 1955, John had put the wire recorder away and moved over to using magnetic tape.
The “Living with Steam” project originally began in 1996, when I performed the first repair of John’s wire recorder. When this was done, John brought all of his wire spools over to my house and listened to the majority of them. While we listened to each wire, John remembered every single detail of the recordings. Everything from the weather conditions right down to how things smelled were brought out. He even remembered which cars had flat spots on the wheels and what freight was being carried by the train.
He talked...I took notes. I was in complete awe of this man and what he seemed to be taking for granted. After all, to him, it was just a hobby. To me, it was like having the opportunity to travel back through time in a way that was previously impossible.
I expressed interest in putting some of John’s best recordings into what I hoped would be a 5-CD set with an accompanying web site I was thinking of developing. John gave me his blessing to do so. He felt that his recordings should be shared and he always thought it was wonderful that people, besides myself, could find the recordings interesting. He only had two conditions; I was to take all of the wires and transfer them to cassettes for him to listen to whenever he wanted.
The other condition was that the information for each recording had to be accurate. Our many conversations about his recordings are what you are reading in this CD booklet. For the first and only volume produced of the Living with Steam project, John personally selected all of the recordings featured on the CD. It was my job to make them sound better than they did on the wire recorder.
Sadly, John passed away in September of 2002. I had not seen him in a while because at that time I was newly married, had a son and daughter, moved into a new house, and started a new job. There was too much on my plate to work on the project.
When John died, I was crushed. I had lost a good friend and mentor, but I felt I had lost any chance of trying to produce the second volume in the Living with Steam series. Sure, I had John’s notes, but how could I possibly write liner notes (or even a podcast script) without John’s photographic memory and experiences guiding everything. The fact was, I couldn’t… until 2019.
I guess if you wait long enough, “technology” will improve to the point where doing research on even the most obscure topic is easy. Capturing and editing audio is simple and affordable. With the incredible advances in internet access, you have the ability to reach a colossal audience; many who shared John’s knowledge of trains, or even knew John personally.
The Living with Steam podcast is special in that it doesn’t feature John’s recordings as its only piece of content. History and stories are wound together with John’s recordings so that you, the listener, can learn about and appreciate the remarkable life of John M. Prophet III and how the railroad industry was such a major part of American life in the early to mid-20th century.
