Living with Steam

Living with Steam is an audio archive with a guide attached. Its core material is the set of wire recordings John M. Prophet III made beside railroad tracks between 1948 and 1955, in Buffalo, across western New York and on road trips farther afield. The Pennsylvania Railroad was his favorite, and the recordings catch K4s, M1s and other engines whistling for crossings, running light, or paired as double-headers. New York Central operations around Buffalo get their turn as well, heard from interlocking towers numbered 49-A, 47 and 50. Aaron Heverin narrates. Before a sequence plays, he lays out the ground it was recorded on: the branch lines that fed Tyrone, the towers that handled its traffic, the brick Queen Anne station built in 1888 whose covered platform kept John and his recorder relatively dry. The result is railroad history told through particular evenings rather than broad sweeps. John emerges as a character. In one episode he pursues a train by car from Tyrone toward Huntingdon around nine at night, recorder running, determined to capture the whole run. In another, Heverin concedes that truck noise on Route 15 buries much of what John caught at Cove, Pennsylvania, then explains why the recordist refused to give up. Not every spool is treated as a treasure. Heverin checks John's written notes against what the wire holds and flags where the two may not match. Tape from his visits with John more than thirty years ago brings the recordist's own voice into the mix. A run of titles shows the range: 'A Dark and Stormy Night at Tower 50', 'Tower XC and the Port of Erie', 'A Trip to Virginia and the N&W', 'The NRHS Rochester Branch Excursion of 1952'. Extra episodes step outside John's collection. A multi-part series follows William A. Steventon and the Railroad Record Club, with Ken Gere recounting in conversation how he finally obtained Steventon's archives. Another gathers vintage commercial train-sound records, several sold to make model railroads sound realistic, from Fred McLeod's Train Sound discs to a children's release on Peter Pan Records, a sound-effects record aimed at radio dramas and a 1952 Cook Laboratories album called Rail Dynamics. Heverin's wry asides loosen the dense detail. Throughout, the show frames its work as keeping a promise to John: sharing the recordings with anyone who finds them interesting.