The 16mm Railroad Movies of John M. Prophet III(Trains of PRR & NYC Mostly)

That’s pretty cool Dave, ….thank you!

Pat

John Prophet was best known for his wire recordings of steam in the Buffalo, NY area from 1948 through 1955, focusing mainly on his favorite railroad, the PRR and of course the NYC. He passed away in 2002 at the age of 86. You can hear many of his recordings on the "Living With Steam" Podcast, hosted by a fellow called Aaron Heverin. This link will take you to the Apple Podcast page for the show.

Aaron has done a great job of cleaning up and editing the ancient wire recordings, an ancestor to tape recording, which uses a hair thin-stainless steel wire as the recording medium. He has also done a very good job of interpreting Mr. Prophet's rather cryptic notes and adding context to the recordings. There are some factual errors on the podcast, but nothing egregious. He welcomes corrections or additional information about locations, operations and the trains themselves. I have offered some information and corrections on his "Living With Steam" Facebook group page, but he doesn't seem to frequent that as much as he does the podcast page

@harmonyards posted:

That’s pretty cool Dave, ….thank you!

Pat

Yeah Pat, this had popped up in my YouTube feed. Since I had done a bunch of watching of old New York Central videos as well as some other things that I had watched in the past, it popped up as a suggestion to watch. Being that the thumbnail picture happen to be track pans, I knew I had to get my eyes on this as we had just recently discussed on the forum last week or so about pans and scoops. I started watching it a bit during lunch, and decided after watching and listening for about 8 minutes in, I had to make sure I got this to the forum.

It was interesting to hear the questions and answers about the films, and more importantly that some of the footage had been used for other production, and a bunch more had not. I really do like the camera mounted in the doodlebug and how the footage was not seen in the big productions of his videos. I cheated and fast forwarded to the track pans as I wanted to see how short it was, I was surprised. I think that is probably the longest video I have seen on just pans alone.

A curious question I do have though. With the GG1 running through the pans, it looks like the end passenger car is disturbing the water in the pans. I doubt that they would be picking up water, but I really don't know what would be doing that other than the speed of the train. Any idea?

Very cool videos and great to learn about his efforts to preserve history!

-Greg

I haven't had time to look at the video in whole nor take a look at the channel either. Usually when I find some great videos, I'll thumb through the channel to see other things that I can find. I think I saw a clip from the movie Broadway Limited from 1936. I had already seen a few parts of it on YouTube before, not sure if this is more of the same parts, but I'll have to see.

@Dave NYC Hudson PRR K4 posted:

I haven't had time to look at the video in whole nor take a look at the channel either. Usually when I find some great videos, I'll thumb through the channel to see other things that I can find. I think I saw a clip from the movie Broadway Limited from 1936. I had already seen a few parts of it on YouTube before, not sure if this is more of the same parts, but I'll have to see.

That channel is well worth your time. There are a bunch more videos which go into detail about John Prophet and his sound recordings and photography and how Aaron Heverin met him and gained his trust.

Most of John Prophet's work had been unseen and unheard for decades.

It had been many years since he had even listened to his own wire recordings because the recorder was malfunctioning and had a tendency to take the delicate wire and make it into an irreparable ball of twisted stainless steel, completely destroying the irreplaceable recordings.

Aaron was able to repair the unit and thus was able to win the trust and respect of Mr. Prophet who was then happy to share the collection with him.

Heverin put out a CD some years back under the title of 'Living With Steam" which contained over an hour of John Prophet's recordings. I bought it when it came out. I hoped for a follow-up volume, but it never came. Then recently I came across the podcast and the associated Facebook pages. Some of the podcasts feature cuts that appeared on the CD, while others were newly culled and edited recordings. It's an ongoing series so I'm hoping to hear more great sounds. He's even branching out to other recordings by other members of the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the NRHS. In the latest episode he has stereo tape recordings of Reading 2102, when she masqueraded as D&H 302 for the D&H 150th Anniversary in 1973. These sounds were recorded by a man called Jim Van Brocklin who, like John Prophet, was a member of the Chapter.

I grew up on sound recordings, which were the most accessible form of documentation of railroads before the advent of home video recorders. I still love to listen to them. There is a certain magic with audio recordings which, like radio, allow you to create an image in your mind's eye as you listen to the sounds unfolding.

I've even made sound recordings of my own. I've put a few of them on Soundcloud.

I'll have to check it out this weekend Nick. Thank you for adding additional information which maybe most of us didn't know. Glad this popped up in my YouTube feed and revealed so much more.

To continue with what Nick has already said about John M Prophet.

If you have or ever visit the Horseshoe Curve, the recordings that you can play in the museum and hear the sounds of the different Pennsylvania Locomotives are from John's recordings. John was also a member contributor to the PRRT&HS. His photographs appearing in a lot of their calendars and publications. Also his photographs appeared in the Alvin Stauffer Pennsy Power books.

I just watched "The 16mm Railroad Movies" of John M. prophet lll.

A really fascinating work by a dedicated railfan.

Highly recommended

@Dave NYC Hudson PRR K4 posted:

A curious question I do have though. With the GG1 running through the pans, it looks like the end passenger car is disturbing the water in the pans. I doubt that they would be picking up water, but I really don't know what would be doing that other than the speed of the train. Any idea?

I think that the movement of air under the train is producing eddys that are disturbing the water. Case in point is that many times I have seen snow rolled up into cylinder-like shapes between the rails from passing trains.

That makes sense Jim. I hadn't thought about that.