User:Gondolaguy/William P. "Bill" Price

William P. "Bill" Price (born:December 17, 1922 Cumberland, Maryland; died: September 19, 2002 Franklin, North Carolina) was a photographer and rail fan who documented the end of steam locomotion on commercial railways, mostly in central Appalachia during the 1940s - 1960s. His work has been published in Trains Magazine and in several books about railroad history.

Early Life
Bill was the third child of a newly single mother, who raised the children by working at the newspaper as a proof reader and taking in sewing. His first job as a small boy was delivering ice on his bicycle, but he soon started delivering the newspaper as well, until he got a job as a pressman for the newspaper, developing film and making the half-tone plates which went into the press.

His first camera was a Kodac Brownie, and he was fascinated with fotographing trains, starting in the 1930's. Cumberland was an important railroad town through which a great portion of Appalachian coal from Northern West Verginia, Western Maryland, Southwestern Pennsylvenia, and Sothern Ohio passed on its way to the port of Baltimore, where it was shipped all over the world.

His first 35mm camera was an Argus AF (made only in 1937-38) which is the camera he took with him into WWII. When the war came, Bill joined the Army Air Corp and served as an X-ray technician at the VA in Charlott, NC. There he met another rail fan, Tom Donahue, and they spent their fre time shooting trains in the area and over around Asheville, NC, sometimes being mistaken for spies.

While in the Army, Bill purchased a Leica 3A, which he then traded for a 3C, that he used throughout his life, along with an M-2 that was his favorite camera. Additionally, he had a medium format Speed Graphic which he used for shooting black and white. The wonderful thing about the Leica was that it had a very fast lense, enabling action photography even with ASA 16 Kodachrome film he used (fast for the day), and reducing the need for a tripod. The combination of Leica cameras and Kodachrome film proved to be a winning combination.