SteelWheels.Photography The Art of Railroading

Steelwheels.photography | The art of railroading

SteelWheels.Photography is the vision and vocation of Frédérick Manfred St Simon—professional railroader, multidisciplinary creative, storyteller, and witness to the soul of steel and motion.

Born into a lifelong fascination with trains—first sparked by a rail-enthusiast father and the thunder of Soo Line freight through Osceola, Wisconsin—I’ve spent the better part of six decades chasing railroads across time and terrain. From Great Northern yards in Great Falls to the high desert of the Pacific Northwest, trains were never just machines to me. They were myth in motion. They still are.

But SteelWheels isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about bearing witness. I bring a railroader’s grit and a documentarian’s eye to every image. My camera isn’t just a tool—it’s a second locomotive, and I ride it hard into the teeth of weather, light, and chance. Whether it’s a firebreathing SD40 charging a prairie grade or the spectral geometry of grain elevators under a cobalt sky, I shoot with reverence for the work, the weight, and the weathering.

Every photograph I make is forged from friction and presence—no glamour, no cosplay. Just the raw intersection of man, machine, and land. This isn’t railfan candy. This is railroad realism, told in contrast and shadow, in thunder and silence.

My work has appeared in Trains Magazine, Locomotive, Railroad Heritage, and has rolled across the screens of Winterail and Autumn Leaf with immersive multimedia productions. I’ve also produced and performed visual narratives in support of real-world rail operations, including a critically praised piece for the Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad’s bid to retain operations of the Central Washington Subdivision—described, without flattery, as “hands down” the best.

SteelWheels.Photography is more than a portfolio. It’s a long-haul journey into the Art of Railroading—where industry becomes iconography, and where every shutter click is a spike driven into the American story.

This is all-black. This is un-ordinary. This is what happens when you hand a locomotive engineer a camera and tell him to go find the truth.

Let’s ride.