Inside the Ronald C. Hill Collection

Hosted by the Center for Railroad Photography & Art as a part of our free monthly online programming series. Learn more: https://railphoto-art.org/events/

After spending nearly fifteen months processing the Ronald C. Hill Collection of approximately 27,000 items including color transparencies, negatives, and prints, Heather Sonntag sees Ron Hill as “the whole rail-fan package.” Join us to hear how Heather first learned about railroad photography through Ron’s impeccable camera work that spans sixty years from 1957 to 2018. She provides an overview of Ron’s long career in heritage train preservation, book publishing, darkroom printing, and railfanning. Also focusing on his color slides, Heather showcases Ron’s tremendous “roadside railroad photography” from the Center’s Visual Heritage Archive, celebrating the many zingers along the mainlines and narrow gauge tracks in Ron’s beloved Rocky Mountain West and elsewhere across North America.

Heather Sonntag joined the Center in 2020 as an associate archivist. She holds a doctorate in cultural history with a focus on 19th-century photography albums and a master’s of library and information studies from UW-Madison. She has interned with the Library of Congress and also works as an assistant archivist of visual materials at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Jeff Brouws is a member of the board of directors for the Center for Railroad Photography & Art and had been a friend to Ron Hill for over fifty years. He brings the Center knowledge of 19th and 20th-century photography and a broad background in publishing, with seven photography books to his credit. His photographs can be found in numerous public and private collections.

Tim Tonge is a member of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art and has known Ron Hill since 1977 when he met him at the Colorado Railroad Museum. The two began a forty-five-year friendship and have traveled together across California, New Mexico, and Wyoming as well as the CRP&A conferences.

Recorded live on March 28, 2023.

Learn more about the Ron Hill Collection: https://railphoto-art.org/collections...

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