Ron Ziel

Ronald Paul Ziel (July 17, 1939 – December 15, 2016) was an American railway historian.

Born in Manhattan, his family moved to eastern Queens in 1942, and eventually settled in Melville in 1949. He first became interested in railroads as a small child, when his mother would take him to watch the trains at the Long Island Rail Road stations at Queens Village and Bellerose.

He attended Huntington High School, graduating in 1957, and studied advertising design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1961. He first began photographing steam locomotives at Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal in the fall of 1960. According to Ziel, these were the last steam locomotives to be used in freight service in the state of New York. He has since written ten more books, including five about the Long Island Rail Road, and has also contributed articles and photographs to Railroad Magazine, Railfan & Railroad and Trains. He also served as executive editor for Dan's Newspapers, a chain of community newspapers serving the East End of Long Island, in addition to working as a writer and staff photographer for those publications.