Book review time? David Busse is right about Plowden's train text. Nicely shot, nicely written.
Personally, I'm a sucker for some of Ball's series of books. As a person who doesnt travel to famous railroading sites throughout the nation, its a nice look at whats going on in the rest of the world. His prologues and epilogues of text before and after the 'photo sections,' often written by others, are well written and informative. Ball also includes photos beyond roster and scenery shots--employees working the sand house, oiling around, taking water... given how common this activity was, its surprising how few illustrations of it surface. [note that Plowden and Ball were both put out by W.W. Norton] Another good catch from the photo book side is Hyde's Milwaukee Road, as published by Hy-Rail. I havent seen its counterpart DRGW book by Sanders, but I suspect theyre of the same quality--good design, good photo reproduction, wonderful maps by Hemphill. Given Hyde's knowledge of the Milwaukee, the book is surprisingly short on text, and reads a bit like CTC Board does the Milwaukee Road [though that shouldn't be surprising]. The Canadian counterpart to the above, in my opinion, is the CP-Morant. Beautiful to look at, but comparatively light reading. Two photo books off the beaten path: the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art's 'The Tracks Going Back' utilizing the resources of the Everett DeGoyler collection at Southern Methodist [finely illustrated small format book with shots far from today's normal pickings] and Grande and Lind's Rails to the Pacific Northwest [Pacific Northwest Chapter of the NRHS]. This features little text, but spectacular photography in a very large format [14 inches high by perhaps 12 wide] on a less than stellar choice of paper. One I havent seen but would like to acquire is Steinheimer's Electric Way... anyone care to review that 15 plus years after publication? Another is Hemphill's recent [LA and SL?] UP text. Pricey and out of my area, I have yet to pick up a copy, though I have seen it. It would be interesting to see what a serious history buff like Hemphill included on the writing side, or if the book follows more along the lines Hyde and Sanders works. A 'serious' book that was somewhat disappointing to me was professor Carlos Schwantes ''Railroad Signatures Across the Pacific Northwest.'' For a professional historian, Dr. Schwantes' book was heavily illustrated and lightly written--a sop to volume sales to a wide audience? Possibly. The best feautures of the book are its overall quality: design, paper, choice of photos, it'll easily be a book the can be handed down a few generations; and his wide access to resources. Schwantes tends to utilize historic photos from research archives, not the typical fan resource, and, though second nature to an academic, the shots are appropriately tagged. Ive seen more than a few historic shots where only the institution was credited--what good is a 'UW Libraries' tag line when they have thousands of photos in their collection? Serious books? BOOK books? Try Malone's Hill, Brown's Baldwin, or Lewty's Columbia Plain. Malone's adds to a large body of literature on Hill, Brown's, which I havent purchased, is probably not too interesting to the diesel-inundated fan of today, and perhaps to heavy a read as well. Lewty's is something I hope will expand in the marketplace in the years to come--a readable, well-researched book written by an independent scholar. These labors of love seem to be unfortunately uncommon. Besides, the pictures are too small. ;-) 73s, JP -- Tell Tale News | http://pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/telltale.html Northern Pacific | http://pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/np.html Historical Assoc. | http://www.employees.org/~davison/nprha/nprha.html || N O R T H E R N P A C I F I C R A I L W A Y || Route of the Vista-Dome North Coast Limited --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1679
