About Catenary Video
“The Best in Archival Railroad Programs”
Catenary Video Productions was established in 1986 by Donald L. Olsen. Encouraged by the fine cinematography of his father, Leslie, Don took up movie making, and found it an ideal medium for recording his major interests -- steam railroading, interurbans and steamships.
He accumulated a library of some 50,000 feet of 16mm film, adding to his own films footage from the cameras of fine cinematographers such as Art Alter, Chuck Savage, Wil Whittaker, and Louis Stein. Although the library covers subjects back to the turn of the century, the majority of the footage was taken from the 1930's to the 1950's, and is in color.
Don's most exciting experience was firing on the Shasta Division of the Southern Pacific in 1947-48. Steam was still king, and most of the time was spent on cab-ahead helpers out of Dunsmuir. Seeing that beautiful country at all times of the day and year from cabs of thundering steam was the ultimate job for a born steam fan!
In 1992, he met filmmaker, Warren Haack who was working on a DVD project on the Westside Logging Railroad. They decided to collaborate on future projects, and in 1994, Warren was invited by Don to become a partner. They worked together for many years, until Don became ill. Don was able to see his “dream project”, West Coast Railroad Logging come to fruition before he passed away in 2014.
Warren continues in Don’s footsteps, keeping quality of programs as priority number one with a goal of producing one new program per year. Catenary has always prided itself with taking the time to make the best quality archival footage based programs available.
Catenary Video Productions
P.O. Box 144
El Granada, CA. 94018
