[PRCo] Vale William D. Middleton

[Phillip Clark Campbell]

By Kevin P. Keefe
Published: July 11, 2011 LIVONIA, N.Y. - William D. Middleton, 83, an author and
photographer who enlightened and entertained nearly
three generations of TRAINS readers, died late yesterday.
e had been living in recent months near his son, Bill.
A railroad journalist of wide-ranging interests and
expertise, Middleton earned more than 80 bylines in
TRAINS since his first article in the October 1957
issue. He also served for many years as a contributing
editor to the industry trade magazine Railway Age.

As a photographer, Middleton's credit line appeared
with countless photos in TRAINS, and his images
appeared on the cover 20 times. His work as a
photographer was profiled in the Spring 2011
issue of CLASSIC TRAINS.

Middleton also had few peers in the railroad book field.
He wrote or co-wrote 23 volumes, many of them standards
in the field. Middleton played a leading role in the
creation of the "Encyclopedia of North American 
Railroads," the landmark one-volume reference 
published in 2004 by Indiana University Press.

Born in Davenport, Iowa, on March 25, 1928, Bill Middleton
became immersed in railroading at an early age. His father,
William, was a physician for the National Indian Service.
His grandfather, also William, was born in Scotland and
was the first chief physician for the Rock Island Railroad.

At age 10, young Bill took his first photograph of a train,
using a Brownie box camera to frame a Great Northern train
on a small bridge near his home in Wolf Point, Mont. 
A civil engineer by profession, Middleton graduated from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1950. At RPI,
he became friends with a young Jim Shaughnessy,
a photographer with equally big accomplishments in his future.

Middleton went to graduate school at the University of
Wisconsin, then embarked on a distinguished 30-year
U.S. Navy career that included service in Korea, Japan,
Turkey, and Morocco. After the Navy, he continued his
engineering career, capping it off with a 13-year
tenure as chief facilities officer at the University
of Virginia in Charlottesville, from which he retired
in 1993.

All the while, Middleton remained remarkably 
prodigious as an author. His many articles in 
TRAINS reflected his restless curiosity: 
electric traction, of course (his specialty), 
but also steam locomotives, railroad engineering, 
international passenger trains, and operations.

Of his many books, the three volumes in his memorable
"traction trilogy" are classics of the genre: 
"The Interurban Era" (1961), 
"The Time of the Trolley" (1967), and 
"When the Steam Railroads Electrified" (1974),
all originally for Kalmbach Books. He also wrote 
definitive books on two of Chicago's Insull interurbans,
"South Shore: America's Last Interurban" (1970) and 
"North Shore: America's Fastest Interurban" (1968), 
published originally by Golden West Books.

Recent titles have included a delightful personal memoir,
"Yet There Isn't a Train I Wouldn't Take," (2000, 
Indiana University Press), and, with his son Bill 
(William D. Middleton III), a biography of one of 
his heroes, "Frank Julian Sprague: 
Electrical Inventor and Engineer" (2009, IU Press). 
He tied railroading directly to his profession in 
"Landmarks on the Iron Road" (1999, IU Press) and 
"The Bridge at Quebec" (2001, IU Press).

Middleton was a quiet force in railroad publishing. 
Soft-spoken and collegial, he displayed the sort of 
leadership that certainly came in part from a Navy 
career. On the "Encyclopedia" project for IU Press, 
he (along with co-leaders George Smerk and Roberta 
L. Diehl) kept an 18-member editorial board in line,
coaxing the unwieldy volunteer staff into producing
a sprawling, indispensable reference.

He also made many friends through his photography, 
among them Stan Kistler and Fred Schneider III, 
who collaborated with Middleton for nearly 40 years
by doing the darkroom work on Bill's expertly 
composed black-and-white images. 
Middleton's wife of 53 years, Dorothy, herself an
accomplished teacher and museum docent, died in 2009.
He is survived by his two sons, Nick, in Seattle,
and Bill, in Livonia.