The Sun God!!

I recommend the latest issue of Australian Railways Illustrated, if you're not on the subscription list. I just got mine in the post today, and if last issue's salute to the Indian Red/Brown/Tuscan/whatever-you-want-to-call-it era of the NSWGR wasn't tasty enough, this latest issue goes whole hog with a portfolio of classic Graham Cotterall color photographs.

Graham just turned 65, and has been seriously photographing railways, first in Queensland, later in New South Wales, since he was a teenager. He's bridged the gap from medium-format black and white to 35mm slides and today is still banging away with Canon digital gear. Though he experienced the steam era first hand, and its gut-wrenching transition years (and authored a black and white book about it; two, if you include "Units in Focus," the all-diesel volume from the era I model), he's still modern-as-today in his photographic interests: you won't find him track side at the steam museum triple-headers, I'd suppose, when there's a down goods train in good light on the Central West. When he's not trackside--and, I suppose, even when he is, giving cellular communications--he's a locomotive assignment manager for CFCLA and sometimes driver for Southern Shorthaul Railroad.

Now, I've never met Graham personally. We have a few mutual friends, though, and I'm fortunate to be on the receiving end of the latest stunning e-mail with a photo or two from him. We were going to get together in 2009 during my first visit, but he was on holiday with his family in Queensland, but Graham certainly kept Lance Lassen and I informed as to train movements we might be interested in photographing. He's sometimes called "The Sun God," for he seemingly never takes a photo when it isn't full-out sunny. The sun, we joke, just follows him around.

So, please, check out the selection of his work in the latest ARI (I'd provide a website link, but I can't find it in the mag anywhere!).