Photographic Cars

Detail of the Windsor Wharves, showing a Palace Rail Road Photo Car, early 1880s.

These were specially fitted passenger car bodies with a mobile darkroom, photo studio with skylight, along with photographic supplies and quarters for the photographer. They emerged in the Western United States in the 1870s. Some were converted cabooses or passenger cars while others were custom made for photography, such as the Palace Rail Road Photograph Car Company. Several photographers in the Annapolis Valley used photographic cars beginning in the 1880s, such as Lewis Wright of Windsor and Wolfville and notably photographer J.P. Tuck who travelled up and down the valley with his Palace RR Photo Car. Examples of his work appearing in Annapolis Royal, Bridgetown and Wolfville where he often took photos of graduates of Acadia University.^[1]

This category includes images of photographic cars and known photographs made on photographic cars along the Dominion Atlantic.

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