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. Several photographers in Nova Scotia used photographic cars beginning in the 1880s, notably photographer J.P. Tuck who travelled up and down the valley with his Palace RR Photo Car in the 1880s. Tuck's car was a 50-foot passenger car custom built for him by the Harris Company of Saint John, NB with a reception room, studio, darkroom and storage.^[1] Examples of his work appear from Annapolis Royal, Bridgetown, Middleton and Wolfville where he often took photos of graduates of Acadia University.^[2] Lewis Rice of Truro, a photographer who also had branch studios including Windsor and Wolfville bought Tuck's photo car in 1891^[3] and used it to do studio work in rural parts of Nova Scotia from about 1890 to 1907.^[4] Another photographer with a photo car in the valley was E.J. Lumsden who advertised photography from his car in Bridgetown in December 1898.^[5]

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

References

External Links

Photograph of Lewis Rice's Photo Car at Tatamagouche, circa 1890, Colchester Historeum, Photograph Accession number: 2016.37.1, Nova Muse

Palace Railroad Photograph Co images at the Wolfville Randall House Museum

Palace Railroad Photograph Co. images at the West Hants Historical Society