The Rhine valley: freight trains and the grape harvest, 1937

Men load timber on a riverbank opposite a town; beyond a row of vines a paddle tug steams upstream past chimneys and a church tower. A heavy steam locomotive hauls a long goods train round a curve below a rock face terraced with vines, and the camera watches wagon after wagon roll past, then catches the train in silhouette against a wooded mountain. On the slope above, a picker in a white shirt bends among the vines, and a weathered hand cuts a heavy bunch of pale grapes.

The railways and the river along the Rhine carried some of the heaviest traffic in Europe, much of it the coal and steel of the Ruhr. The vintage, all by hand on these slopes, began in late September or October.