The locomotive number is #15. It's an E6. Only CB&Q had E5s.

This image, like many (if not all) of the images that get posted on Shorpy, comes from the Library of Congress collection. This was one of Jack Delano's images he shot under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration Photography Program in 1943 (I'm sure many of us here are familiar with some of his Santa Fe and C&NW steam images in the same collection). Apparently he shot a few images of the Chief in Albuquerque that day. The LOC site has five of them, including this one (minus the Shorpy watermarks and the odd "SHO"/"RPY" lettering on the buildings, of course) and a few similar views in both color and black & white: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Albuquerque%20Jack%20Delano%20Super%20Chief

Which would explain why you see pictures recognized from Shorpey's being sold as posters on eBay.

My understanding is that Shorpy considers as his intellectual property the Photoshop work he does to clean up and enhance images which are otherwise in the public domain. The following is the fine print on the left side of his webpages:

“Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.”

I suspect that clause was written by an attorney. I’m no lawyer, and don’t even play one on TV, but the key words above are likely “derivative works”. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work Effectively, Shorpy is saying that if you like one of the images, and want to sell prints, either pay him royalties or do your own Photoshop work.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

Still love the Dad and his kid admiring the sleek loco; the other kid, with hands in pockets meandering through all the refueling activity and the veteran hogger with grip and tie.

Bob

It's FAR more likely, however, that they're simply exploiting the (relative) ignorance of their usual target audience, and attempting to lead them to believe that they have some kind of "exclusive" on the imagery, when a modicum of research will lead any knowledgeable artist/photo researcher directly to the (public-domain) source. And you no longer have to go to the Madison Building of the Library of Congress to access these at full-resolution digital, either (as I had to in decades past).

There's no law saying that you can't make money from the reselling of a public-domain image. And if you troll eBay long enough you'll no doubt find hundreds of folks selling collections of "original photos" actually downloaded from public domain or even copyrighted sources. Even bookstores have long been full of "coffee table" books chock full of such images--as have the rail/transportation sections of said stores.

Yet another great picture. Consider the daily employment.

http://www.shorpy.com/node/50?size=_original#caption