This was a bit of a one off in the New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection on the Library of Congress website. It doesn’t appear to be part of a series and I can find no other railway photographs in the same collection. But it’s a good ‘un nonethless, even though it’s needed a bit of restoration work.

The scene is clearly a winter one, with the scattering of snow on the ground and the leaden east coast skies. The abundance of parked locomotives all in steam would suggest that this is was shot fairly early in the day, but I could be wrong.

The water tank looks fairly ramshackle, indeed fairly primitive compared with some of the massive facilities in American railway photographs, but is also very reminiscent of the archetypal New York water tower seen on many buildings in the city.

I can’t help but get the feeling this was a grab shot from the window of a stopped (or passing) train on an over bridge – not sure why though.