and locations along the railroad. The YV was only 77 miles long and
only had 10 locomotives over its entire life. That made developing a
filing system fairly simple using standard file folders.
But that initial simple folder system had an inherent problem, since
it was too easy to remove photos from their folders for a modeling
project, only to have them temporarily disappear on my model-
ing workbench. There was also no real way of keeping track of the
location, photographer, date taken, etc., for each photo, except for
minimal notes penciled on the back of the prints.
I eventually converted my growing collection of photos and file
folders into a system of binders with photos filed under a sys-
tematic numbering system [1]. Each photo was given a five-digit
number with the first two digits designating the subject and the
following three digits a simple numerical counter.
GETTING REAL |
4
2. Merced is the western terminus of the Yosemite Valley Rail-
road and is subject 10. Photographs of Merced are thus num-
bered 10001, 10002, and so forth. The “location” subjects are
followed by the locomotives and equipment.
GETTING REAL |
5
The basic system is illustrated by this graphic [2] which
shows the subject number and how photos are numbered
under each subject.
For example, Merced, at the western end of the railroad is
10 followed by 12 for the next location along the line, and so
forth. The location subjects were followed by subject numbers
for each locomotive on the line and each type of freight car,
caboose, and passenger car.
This system seemed very logical at the time, but as my knowl-
edge of the railroad grew, a shortcoming arose. For example,
when I set up the system, I knew virtually nothing about one
13-mile section of the railroad which was inaccessible except by
hiking or white-water rafting. So I used one subject number for
all the photos from that section of the railroad, resulting in 160
photos for this section.
This made it more time-consuming to find photos of a particu-
lar spot or location within this section. After I learned more
about that section, I realized that I could have divided it into
several different subjects.
A better system would have been to number the location fold-
ers based on the first two digits of the closest milepost of the
location. Thus, the folder for Merced would have been 00 and
Merced Falls would have been 24, since it was near milepost 24.
This would have allowed me to add locations as I gained more
knowledge and photos.
Once I developed this system, I began storing my photos in
binders with dividers for each subject. However, with funds for
my hobby limited at the time, I tried to minimize the number of
pages in these binders by filing 5x7 prints two to a page per side,
