Photograph by John F Bjorklund Ãâ© 2016 Center for Railroad Photography and Art
John Bjorklund (1939–2005) photographed railroads throughout the Usa and Canada for most of his adult life. He was born in Tacoma, Washington, to Walter and Barbara Bjorklund. Walter was a Northern Pacific Division Engineer whose frequent division shifts on the railroad and engineering assignments allowed John to grow up and blot, larn and savor most all of the Northern Pacific in the due west. The family lived in Billings, Montana, during John's elementary school years, and later in St. Paul, Minnesota. This exposure led to John's love of the Northern Pacific, which carried on into the Burlington Northern, but John also had huge soft spots for the Milwaukee Route, Erie Lackawanna and overnice big passenger trains, like the NP'southward flagship Northward Coast Limited.
Following college at the Academy of Minnesota in St. Paul (the real U. of M., as he would say), John served two years in the Ground forces. He was stationed at Fort Knox and engaged in psychological testing. Following his belch in 1965, he returned to St. Paul and constitute employment at the Ford Motor Company. Ford soon transferred him to Detroit, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He retired in 1999, having ascended to the corporate level as a traffic analyst. His worked involved coordinating the transportation of automobile body parts and finished automobiles by rail and truck. Through professional contacts, he gained many great friends on the railroads.
Besides his railroad photography, John had a smashing love for the opera and classical music. He put together several dissolve slide shows of railroad photographs fix to classical music, finding but the right ballad or instrumental for each photo sequence. More than importantly John possessed a keen memory. Friends chosen him "a walking hard drive" for his uncanny power recall details, dates and locations.
When he started photography in the tardily 60s, there were numerous point towers and stations all the same in use, which John often incorporated in his photos. He loved signals higher up all, and diverse types appeared frequently in his photos as both subjects and compositional elements. His favorites by far were semaphores or "blades" as he called them. John made it a indicate to cover as much as he could of disappearing aspects of railroading before they disappeared.
This interest and drive allowed John to cover a nifty deal of the U.S. and a good portion of Canada during his photography career. Besides traveling with near of the Detroit Tuesday Dark Live grouping (a group of Detroit-area railroad photographers who meet on Tuesday nights to share photos), John was likewise a frequent photography partner with Jim Thomas, Mike Schafer, Doug Harrop, Emery Gulash, Jeff Mast, Bob Kessler and Jim Koglin. Kessler, Koglin and Bjorklund traveled together so frequently during the last 10 years of John's life that friends dubbed them the infamous "Group of Iii."
In the early 1980s John deputed a painting past noted railroad artist Larry Fisher. Based on ane of John's photos, information technology shows one of his favorite locations that contained two of his favorite railroads: the Northern Pacific and the Milwaukee Road about Iris, Montana. The painting features the Milwaukee Road's Olympian Hiawatha with electrical "boxcab" no. E14 overtaking a westbound NP freight headed by Z6 "Challenger" steam locomotive no. 5117.
John is survived by his wife Rose, whom he married late in life in 1990, and brothers Drew of Minneapolis and Charles of New York. He is fondly remembered by many swell friends in the Detroit area, and around the U.S. and Canada.
–Jeff Mast, September 2011
John F. Bjorklund (left) and swain lensman Ron Piskor photographing a Conrail train on the one-time Pennsylvania Railroad's "Panhandle" road in Ohio on Apr 7, 1979.
Bjorklund Collection Overview
- Souvenir of Rose Bjorklund
- 55,000 color slides
- 1960s to 2000s
- Coverage spans the Us and Canada
Reproduction Requests
- High resolution scans from the Bjorklund Drove are bachelor for print and electronic reproduction
- To make requests, visit the collections page or send an email to info@railphoto-art.org
Source: https://railphoto-art.org/collections/bjorklund/
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