Trackside Slides is dedicated to the memory of our father, Kenneth W. Moore.  Dad was an avid railroad photographer throughout much of his life with many of his slides gracing the pages of books and magazines throughout the years.  He started shooting color slides in 1958 and continued shooting film until he died in 2009.  In all, he took about 25,000 slides during that time, with a large majority of them about trains and railroad related items.

As a child, dad would go down to the Santa Fe depot in Moody, TX each day after school.  While there, he would visit with the station agent and run errands for him while generally making the depot his second home.  Watching the trains come by hooping up orders went a long way in cementing the Santa Fe as his favorite railroad.

His railroad universe expanded considerably when his family eventually moved to Fort Worth.  After graduating from high school, dad spent one summer working in the car shops at the Texas & Pacific’s Lancaster Yard.  He also spent some time at Tower 55 near downtown Fort Worth.

Dad looked at working for the Texas & Pacific Railroad after graduating with an engineering degree from Texas Tech, but ultimately decided to take a job in Borger, TX with Phillips Petroleum.  That was a fortuitous move as Borger was in the top ten of traffic generated on the Santa Fe system.  With a refinery and several other petro-chemical plants nearby, Borger justified a daily train from Amarillo, TX.  A wide variety of Santa Fe engines came to Borger over the years and the layovers allowed dad to take pictures many evenings after work.  

Upon his retirement, dad started Trackside Slides where he traveled to railroad shows selling his slides, timetables, and other railroad related items.  We have scanned about 10,000 of his slides and want to use this site to preserve these memories.  Dad was meticulous in documenting what he saw, when he saw it, even down to noting the time of day.  This really helps to bring the pictures to life and gives us a little glance into his stories in pictures.

Although the Santa Fe was his favorite railroad, other railroads are not ignored.  The Katy (MKT) and Rock Island (CRIP) were well represented as are other railroads in Texas and the central plains.  Our hope is that you enjoy these slides and the stories they portray as much as we do.

Thanks for looking.

David, Karl, and Mark Moore.