Photographer, author J. Parker Lamb dies at 91

AUSTIN, Texas – Among the daring practitioners who revolutionized railroad photography in the 1950s and early ’60s, none reached a more receptive audience or garnered more praise than J. Parker Lamb. A mechanical engineer by profession, he worked hard to have his photos tell a story about people and technology, especially if it involved diesel locomotives.

Lamb died Friday, May 9, at home in Austin after a long illness. He was 91.

Lamb was born in 1933 in Boligee, Ala., a small town on the Southern’s Alabama Great Southern main line between Birmingham and Meridian, Miss., to which the family relocated in 1938.

In Meridian, Lamb’s childhood interest in railroads was encouraged by a local tower operator, Guy Horton, with whom the youth spent many happy hours. “(I was) learning about the operation of railroads, Morse code, handing up orders, things like that,” Lamb said later.

After high school, Lamb began a successful career as an engineering educator, and at each stop along the way he made significant photographs of the surrounding railroad landscape. While attending Auburn University in 1951-1955 for his bachelor’s degree, he concentrated on regional lines from New Orleans to Memphis, Atlanta, and Mobile. This resulted in his first published photo in Trains, a shot of the GM&O’s St. Louis-Mobile Gulf Coast Rebel, departing southbound from Meridian behind Alco PA diesels. That first photo in Trains and others that followed made a strong impression on Editor David P. Morgan, who included Lamb in a special invitation-only showcase of top photographers published in the November 1955 issue, the magazine’s 15th anniversary. Morgan called it “a selection of the best.”

It should have been no surprise to anyone who knew Lamb that he submitted a diesel picture, a stirring going-away view of four Southern EMDs — three F units led by a Geep — photographed from atop a highway bridge. As if to make a case for diesels, Lamb wrote “(they) are not as dull and drab as some dyed-in-the-wool steam enthusiasts would lead us to believe.” Over the years, Lamb would shoot hundreds of diesels.

The next stop for Lamb was Dayton, Ohio, where he was stationed for two years as a U.S. Air Force officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. His years in the service gave him the opportunity to photograph the waning days of steam on New York Central, Baltimore & Ohio, and, especially, the Pennsylvania, where, in the summer of 1956, he shot PRR J-class 2-10-4s working alongside leased Santa Fe 5000-class 2-10-4s.

After his Air Force stint, Lamb enrolled at the University of Illinois, where he earned a Ph.D. in engineering. During his time in Champaign-Urbana he created a significant body of work surrounding the Illinois Central Railroad, then still partially in steam. His wintertime images of IC’s burly, homebuilt 2600-class 4-8-2s are especially notable. Lamb began his teaching career in 1961 at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, in the department of engineering mechanics. This allowed Lamb to photograph an entirely new set of local railroads, notably the Seaboard and Atlantic Coast Line. He created one of his most memorable images at Selma, N.C., showing a boy on a bicycle, enjoying ACL and Southern Railway action in July 1962. True to form, he eschewed the usual angle and instead photographed the youngster beyond the underframe of ACL’s passing Everglades passenger train.

In 1963, Lamb made his last big career move, this time to the University of Texas in Austin, where he had a long and successful career. In addition to teaching, he served at various times as chairman of the department of mechanical engineering, and associate dean of the college of engineering. He concentrated on aeronautical engineering and his research specialty was fluid mechanics and heat transfer.

Upon his retirement in 2001 the university conferred upon him the title of professor emeritus. In 2010, the University of Texas established the Dr. J. Parker Lamb Endowed Presidential Fellowship in Mechanical Engineering, to benefit U-T’s Cockrell School of Engineering.

His academic credentials were helpful in his authorship of two important railroad books, including Perfecting the American Steam Locomotive (Indiana University Press, 2003) and Evolution of the American Diesel Locomotive (Indiana, 2007). He authored four other books featuring his photography and experiences, including possibly his personal favorite, Katy: Diesels to the Gulf (Motorbooks International, 1996). His appearances in Trains Magazine over the years — as both photographer and author — are legion.

Accolades that came later in life confirmed Lamb’s status among photographers. In 1991, the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society recognized Lamb’s body of work with its Fred A. and Jane R. Stindt Photography Award. At the time he was only the tenth person to be so honored. Lamb also served as the president of R&LHS 2007-2010; he compiled a history of the organization published in the Spring-Summer 2009 issue of Railroad History.

In 2001, Boston Mills Press published Lamb’s Steel Wheels Rolling: A Personal Journey
of Railroad Photography, a lavish photographic portfolio written by the photographer with a Foreword by Greg McDonnell, the book’s editor. In his introduction, McDonnell said Lamb produced photographs “that are not just to be viewed, but experienced.”

In 2014, Lamb agreed to donate his archive to the Center for Railroad Photography & Art, based in Madison, Wis. Lamb had already digitized his negative collection, and the archive received additional processing and cataloguing at the Center. In 2019 the organization showcased Lamb’s images again in a hardcover book, The Railroad Photography of J. Parker Lamb, featuring the aforementioned photo at Selma on the dust jacket.

Parker Lamb was very much a people person. His involvement in the community of railroad enthusiasts was a hallmark of his career. “I received a lifetime of satisfaction and enjoyment during the creation of these images,” he said in 2014. “(I) hope that others will be able to use them to learn about American railroads in the twentieth century.”

Information about funeral arrangements or memorials is pending.