(gentle piano music) (train chugging) (train horn blowing) - My father, John Helbok, was my mentor, my inspiration but when he saw my love for trains when I was a very little boy in his late twenties, he became an almost instant rail fan and we chased trains across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York.

It was a golden age for steam railroading in that era, in the late '60s and early '70s.

Most importantly for me, he surrounded me with these photos that hung on the walls of my room.

I consider myself a very lucky person because my parents recognized my passion for trains from the time that I was very small, and they nurtured that and supported it.

I don't even remember a time that I did not love trains.

A few years ago, I asked my father about his philosophy of making photographs, how he constructed a photograph in his mind, and he told me, "I like what my eyes like."

I understand that.

That's the way I make photographs.

I don't think about them so much, I feel them.

To me, railroading has three major themes.

The most important is the people.

The people who are making the trains go.

The people who are keeping steam railroading alive in the 21st century.

(fast upbeat music) (fast upbeat music continues) It took me many years to come to the realization that the people were the most important part.

I had spent my youth and young adulthood shooting hardware and the people were secondary.

Now I understand the importance of making portraits of railroad people.

The second theme of railroading is the hardware, the tracks the signals, the locomotives.

All of that is the stuff that initially attracted me when I was a boy.

Watching trains go by, looking at those massive pieces of constructed hardware.

The steam locomotive is what really moved me.

A steam locomotive is a living thing.

It breathes, it sighs, it moans.

An air pump on a steam locomotive sounds like a beating heart, so much about a locomotive is human.

(gentle upbeat music) The third theme for me is the landscape and by that I mean everything surrounding the railroad.

That's the towns, the countryside, even the weather.

For me, when I go out looking at the railroad I also see it as part of that landscape.

(gentle upbeat music continues) Each of my photographs is giving some sense of what's important to me.

When you look at my photograph you're seeing directly into my heart.

Here is something that I love.

I love these machines, the most seemingly alive of all of humanity's creations.

I want to capture their drama and their beauty and I want to share the feelings that they evoke in me.

Part of the reason there are so many country songs written about trains is that a track takes us away from where we are.

We may be going in a certain direction but that track is at a 90 degree angle and it's telling us that there's something else out there in some other direction, and we can't help but be drawn down that track to look at it, to wonder what's there.

The track is taking us to some other place that we hadn't imagined yet.

My father taught me how to see by teaching me how to be and by that I mean, he embodied an endless curiosity about the world.

That is the most important inheritance that I got from him.

(gentle music)