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Train Watcher's Guide to North American Railroads, The by Drury Soft Cover
Train-Watcher's Guide to North American Railroads, The by George Drury 1984 second printing 1958 220 pages
Introduction
The Railroads
Rail Transit Systems
Glossary
Index
THIS BOOK is intended as a ready reference to more than 140 railroads in the United States, Canada and Mexico
Not only Class 1 and Class 2 railroads but major short lines, commuter authorities, and terminal companies. Railroads are listed alphabetically, and the index has entries for nicknames and recently merged railroads. Information on each railroad includes a brief history and description, address of the general offices, numbers of cars and locomotives, miles of railroad operated, reporting marks, location of principal shops and yards, junctions with other railroads, passenger routes, radio frequencies, and recommended reading - plus a thumbnail map and a photograph.
The information in this book has been compiled from a number of sources and reviewed for accuracy by the railroads themselves. This book satisfies a long-felt need for a handy, all-in-one-volume reference book that will answer the most-asked questions about North American railroads. It belongs on every railroad enthusiast's bookshelf or more likely next to his favorite reading chair, in his camera bag, on his model building workbench, or in the glove compartment of his car.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR-George H. Drury has been on the staff of Kalmbach Publishing Co. since 1972 and has served as its librarian since 1975. His prior experience includes life in out-of-the-way places like Reading Massachusetts Newark Delaware, and Klamath Falls Oregon, a fling at college admissions work, and a short period as a computer programmer in Southern Pacific's general offices in San Francisco. His articles have appeared in Rail Travel News, MODEL RAILROADER, and TRAINS. He is particularly known for accounts of his rail trips in the U.S. Canada Mexico, and Europe.
Besides railroads, both full-size and model, his interests include gardening and choral music. This is his first book.
INTRODUCTION-Back in olden days you found out about railroads first by reading all the railroad books in the public library (there were three, one by Lucius Beebe) and then by
hanging around the depot, the latter at some cost in parental disapproval and underdone homework. It was a bright day when the agent in the ticket office gave you a system timetable. In it were schedules and equipment lists for the passenger trains of the railroad, perhaps an ad for the road's freight service, and a map. On the map, which usually occupied the center spread, the railroad's own lines were straight and thick. Friendly connections were narrower, and competing roads, even the four-track main line of the New York Central, were squiggly hairlines.
Then came a day when the agent gave you an old copy of The Official Guide of the Railways a pulp paper monthly, 7 inches by 10 and a couple of inches thick. After perusing it for a few minutes you knew how Keats felt, standing silent on that peak in , looking into his copy of Chapman's Homer
Guide contained timetables for every railroad in North and Central America and maps for most of them the same maps that were in the railroads' timetables, but you could average the straight and crooked lines. The Guide showed you where each railroad went and which connected with which. It gave substance to the freight cars you saw at trackside and on hobby shop shelves. You could pinpoint those decrepit short lines Beebe admired. You could read yourself to sleep at night planning trips. It was great stuff.
Now it's different. The depot has been torn down, the agent works out of a van, and kids hang around shopping malls. The Guide is a pair of books, a passenger edition with timetables for Amtrak, VIA, National of Mexico, and a few suburban lines, and a freight edition that's mostly piggyback schedules and lists of officials.
The Guide wasn't a complete reader's companion - it couldn't tell you how many freight cars Santa Fe owned, or where Union Pacific's major classification yards were, or what the initials "DWP" stood for. Some of those questions were answered in the Handbook of American Railroads by Robert G. Lewis, published by Simmons-Boardman in 1951 and 1956, but now long out of date and even longer out of print. The more recent American Short Line Railway Guide by Edward A. Lewis was an excellent reference to the smaller railroads; it too is now out of print. Today's railroad enthusiast needs some sort of unofficial guide, a combination field guide, modeler's bluebook, reader's companion, and friendly station agent -in other words, a good quick source of short answers and a pointer to longer ones. This book should satisfy that need.
Railroads included:
Included in this book are all the Class 1 railroads (currently those with annual operating revenue greater than $50 million the figure has increased over the years), railroads more than 50 miles long, those with more than 1000 freight cars in interchange service, and commuter operating authorities. A few roads in the book meet none of these criteria; I included them because they are interesting in one way or another. For this book the definition of railroad has been left loose enough to include operating companies such as VIA Rail Canada that own cars and locomotives but no track, but I have excluded "invisible railroads" those that are leased to or operated by other railroads, either singly or jointly, and have no rolling stock of their own.
I have not included museum and tourist railroads nor have I included full descriptions of rail transit operations - subways, streetcars, light rail vehicles because these operations are usually not part of the national freight railroad network. Tourist railroads are well documented in the Steam Passenger Services Directory, and a list of North American rail transit systems appears on pages 210-213.
Organization:
This book is organized alphabetically by railroad name. Until 1974 The Official Guide was arranged geographically, east to west with odd exceptions, followed by Canada Mexico, and the
electric railroads, with some of the "families"
Soft Cover -- 51/2 in by 8 in & 217 pages.
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