Remainder of J.J. Young Jr. photo collection to be available online NEWSWIRE

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The vast collection of photos taken by the late J.J. Young Jr. will soon be made available to the public. As a result of a Flickr page set up earlier this year showing Young’s images from the area in and around Binghamton, N.Y., Young’s widow Liz has agreed to allow access to the remainder of his collection.

Photographer Sam Botts and Young’s son, J.J. Young III, will now begin to examine and scan thousands of the elder Young’s negatives. Botts says the project will take several years to complete. The Binghamton area images that have already been posted consumed two years of work to make the 800 images available.

Young was born in Wheeling, W.Va., on May 23, 1929 and began taking photographs when he was seven years old in 1936. He worked for the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad before moving in 1959 to Binghamton where he taught photography. After retiring from Broome Technical Community College in Binghamton in 1995, Young relocated to Charleston, where he continued his life-long hobby of photographing trains until his death. Young never had a driver’s license, yet visited all 48 states in the continental U.S. chasing trains.

Young amassed a collection of more than 10,000 images before he passed away in 2004.

Four images from Young’s steam era photography have been added to the Flickr page at www.flickr.com/photos/jjyoungjr.