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John Zuidema (March 22, 1934 – October 24, 2021) was an American transportation historian whose research concentrated on the railroads, buses, and street transportation of northern New Jersey. He is particularly associated with the history of the Erie Railroad and the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad, commonly known as the Susquehanna or NYS&W.

Zuidema grew up in northern New Jersey, in the Hawthorne and Prospect Park area, where railroads were a prominent part of everyday life. He attended Eastern Christian Academy in Paterson and later Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford before serving in the United States Navy.

Although sometimes encountered today through railroad photographs credited to the “John Zuidema collection,” the available evidence identifies Zuidema primarily as a historian, researcher and collector rather than as a professional railroad employee. His interests extended well beyond locomotives. His obituary specifically describes him as a transportation historian who collected information on the Erie and Susquehanna railroads as well as Public Service buses and trolleys in New Jersey.

His connection with the Susquehanna was especially personal. In a 2007 remembrance of former NYS&W railroad employee John Frederick Sytsma, Zuidema explained that his interest in the Susquehanna led him to begin corresponding with Sytsma in the late 1970s. Their correspondence continued for nearly three decades. Sytsma had worked on the NYS&W as a fireman and engineer before becoming an official of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, giving Zuidema access to firsthand recollections of the railroad and northern New Jersey railroad life. Zuidema wrote that he particularly valued Sytsma's knowledge of the Susquehanna and of the Hawthorne–Prospect Park area where both families had roots.

Zuidema's research was not confined to private collecting. In 1995 he published “Bus Lines Through Hawthorne, New Jersey, 1930's–1950's” in Motor Coach Today, the journal of the Motor Coach Society. The article documented the bus services of the community in which he had grown up and illustrates the breadth of his approach to transportation history: railroad, trolley and bus history were parts of the same regional story. The work is cataloged in the Transportation Research International Documentation database maintained for transportation literature.

Photographs and historical material carrying Zuidema's name have also circulated among railroad historians. For example, documentation of early New Jersey railfan excursions cites photographs from the John Zuidema collection in connection with Erie Railroad activities. This is significant because it suggests that Zuidema preserved material created by other photographers as well as information and photographs he may have accumulated himself. Consequently, a photograph stamped, labeled or credited “John Zuidema Collection” should not automatically be interpreted as a photograph personally taken by Zuidema; in historical railroad collections, such a credit often identifies the later owner or custodian of the image.

Zuidema's adult life eventually took him away from New Jersey. After his Navy service he moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he met Gladys, his future wife, while attending the Reformed Bible Institute. They were married for 57 years. Beginning in 1968, Zuidema and his family spent approximately two and a half years in Nigeria as missionaries for the Christian Reformed Church. He later worked for many years at the accounting and professional-services firm BDO Seidman. He was also a longtime member of Twelfth Avenue Christian Reformed Church and served repeatedly as an elder.

Transportation history nevertheless remained a lifelong pursuit. Rather than simply collecting attractive railroad photographs, Zuidema appears to have assembled information, photographs, correspondence and firsthand testimony concerning transportation in northern New Jersey. His long correspondence with former railroad employees and the survival of photographs identified with his collection make his work particularly valuable to researchers studying the Erie, the NYS&W and local transit operations during the twentieth century.

John Zuidema died on October 24, 2021, at age 87 in Michigan. He was survived by his wife Gladys, four children and three grandchildren.

Today, Zuidema is best understood not simply as a “railroad guy,” but as a regional transportation historian. His importance lies in the material he gathered and preserved: photographs, historical information and memories concerning transportation systems that had already begun disappearing during his lifetime. When a vintage railroad photograph carries a John Zuidema collection credit, it therefore has a documented connection to a researcher who spent decades preserving the transportation history of northern New Jersey.