Central Vermont Railway, Locomotive Number 470, Class N-5A 2-8-0 on the Turntable, Brattleboro, Vermont
1957, printed later
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
inkjet print
Dimensions
image: 28 × 36.6 cm (11 × 14 7/16 in.) sheet: 33.02 × 48.26 cm (13 × 19 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of David Plowden
Accession Number
2023.59.69
Art Historical Context
In 1957, photographer David Plowden capturedCentral Vermont Railway, Locomotive Number 470, Class-5A 2-8-0 on the Turntable, Brattleboro Vermont*, a poignant black-and-white image of a engine poised for reversal on a railway turntable. This inkjet print, made from the original negative and later gifted to the National Gallery of Art, measures 28 × 36.6 cm in its image area, inviting viewers into a vanishing industrial world. The photograph arrives at a pivotal moment in American railroading: by the late 1950s, diesel locomotives were rapidly displacing powerful steam workhorses like this 2-8-...
About the Artist
David Plowden
David Plowden, born on October 9, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Roger Stanley Plowden and Mary Russell Butler, grew up primarily in New York City with time spent in Putney, Vermont. He attended the Putney School, graduating in 1951, and earned a BA in economics from Yale University in 1955. His passion for photography ignited early; at age eleven, his mother gave him a Brownie reflex camera, ...