Railway books

Hello all, glad to find you --
I am trying to help a friend to dispose of some of her recently deceased father's books - many of which are railway-related -- he had a great interest in many things, but one of his chief loves was railroad.
I'll be adding these books to my library with the tag "rail," and they will be available for little cost - enough to cover the shipping chiefly, and I can mediate and put people in touch with the widow, who would be shipping them. The books are all in the UK, so postage would be greater I imagine, the further out one lives. The primary reason for me doing it this way rather than hauling the lot to the used book shop is that many are pretty specialised titles from what I can see, and the people involved would really like for the books to go to someone who would really appreciate them.
Thanks, and feel free to message me for any further details - in the meantime, have a look and see if there's anything interesting for you.

best,
Pete

Thanks, Pete. Quite an impressive collection. Let me know if you have any specifically on African railways.

Cheers!
John

I might have an interest, but I do live in the U.S. My main interest is in local railways, electric railways, tramways, and railroad station operation and architecture.

Further,

I did look at the 40 catalogued so far, and noted that the first book listed is by Brian Solomon whose father I know fairly well -- and I have met the son. Brian lives in Ireland -- the father lives in Massachusetts.

Pete,

Can you re-post when you add any more. There's a few things in there that make me prick up my ears a bit, but nothing mega so far. And if you think those are specialised, you should see my library! (And you can...)

Seeing as we're trying to inject a little activity into the group, perhaps we should make this thread into one on railway books we have recently read. I know there is a thread called 'Railway Books for the Literate', but I suspect that the qualification may have put some people off, if only for assuming that it excluded books of photographs, or books with a mainly technical focus.

Now I'm retired, I find I'm spending more time reading and writing reviews, and whilst not all of my reading is railway-oriented, I do maintain a railway reading thread in my own personal reading schedule. That railway thread is, in turn, divided into three sub-threads: British railways, Irish railways and 'the rest of the world'. The coverage of that last one is fairly eclectic, and I think I can find something on every continent where railways may bed found. However, it is especially strong on Austria, mainly because I was for many years Secretary, and latterly Chair, of the Austrian Railway Group, until we closed it down earlier this year for a whole pile of reasons. Just over ten years ago, I even compiled A Bibliography of Austrian Railway Literature; I understand there is a bookshop in Vienna which still has a copy...

Since LT has enhanced the UI, we now have the ability to attach reviews to posts, so I'll kick off with one of a rather attractive Irish photo album I've recently enjoyed.

My most recent railway read, on British railway architecture.

And another, this time on pre-World War I German railcars and diesels. Especially notable given how up-to-date we all are with battery traction nowadays - and here was the KPEV doing it in 1910!

(Text is German but fairly straightforward; pictures and plans are universal.)

>8 RobertDay: I’ve looked at a few of these Eisenbahn Journal specials, they really are very interesting and useful publications.

The pre-war Akkutriebwagen were followed by several more modern types, especially the ETA 150 introduced in the late fifties, which survived in service until 1995 — I travelled on those quite often. Always fun, because you could watch the line ahead over the driver’s shoulder.

Next up, a history of Lithuanian steam locomotives between 1919 and 1940. A very specialist subject, well covered and accessible through a decent translation.

My most recent railroad read is Soak it...and Other Railroad Stories

My review:

This book is the 9th in a series of books Mr. Geletzke has written about his and other railroaders experiences working on the railroad. In this volume, in addition to his own stories, the author has included the experiences of 23 other individuals. The primary railroad of focus for the various events is the Grand Trunk Western, however, the stories do include descriptions of events which occurred on other railroads.

The author’s writing style is a pleasant blend of detailed facts and word pictures of events as they unfolded and the first story, while brief, sets the narrative tone for the rest of the experiences detailed in the book.

The typical story length is a few pages, however, there are stories which are no more than one or two paragraphs on a single page. There are also two long stories, Confessions of a Quitter or “We May Never Pass This Way Again …” and Ship and Travel by Rail … From an Extremely Technical Perspective!, of 53 and 37 pages in length respectively. Both of these stories stand apart from the rest with respect to the level of detail they provide and the span of time in the author’s lives they encompass.

Of the two I found Confessions of a Quitter to be more interesting. It is Mr. Geletzke’s recounting of his work on the Kingsville Division of the Missouri Pacific in Texas. While the pay was great the work hours were almost unbelievable with respect to the number of hours in the day and the complexity of the required work. The author provides the details of the day-to-day work and compliments the discussion with relevant annotated track plans of the various industrial centers where the work was performed. The combination of prose and diagrams gives the reader an excellent understanding of the author’s work situation and holds the reader’s interest.

The occupations of the individuals whose stories have been compiled in this book include switchman, brakeman, engineer, conductor, manager, road foreman, railfan, car inspector, fireman, manager of personnel, and train dispatcher. While this list does not include all of the job titles one can find in a railroad organization it is a representative sample and the experiences chronicled cover the range of work one would expect in the railroad setting.

I'm reading Modern Railway Operation by David Lamb, an old hardback which has been on my bookshelf for years. "Modern" is a relative term, as this is a 1941 revised third edition of a book first published in 1926, but it is very interesting, and a lot of basic railway operating principles are still relevant. This book has some lovely fold-out plans and diagrams pasted into it.

Unrelatedly I'm also currently relaying the track in my goods (freight) yard on my Africa-themed model railway set in the 1960s, and this book has given me a couple of ideas for modifications to the yard.

>6 RobertDay: Welcome to the land of the retired although I use the terms "new career" as in curator of the Sanderson Museum (www.sandersonmuseum.org) or at other times the "gainfully unemployed."

It's approaching bed time for me so I have flagged this to come back and good over the information in more detail. Now I get ready to freeze. We're heading to -12C tonight in southeast Pennsylvania.

Another read, this time on Irish railway history:

I've just finished re-reading The Railway Children by E Nesbit, a charming and delightful tale. Perhaps surprisingly for a children's book, the railway detail in it is relatively accurate.

>15 John5918: A while back, I acquired a facsimile of an early 1950s booklet, The Flying Scotsman, which was ostensibly written for children, but made no major concessions to its intended audience in either language or technical detail.

>15 John5918: The old film adaptation filmed on the Keighley & Worth Valley (and featuring Jenny Agutter’s red petticoat) is pretty good too. I saw it in the cinema in Ramsey IoM when I was a child, and of course we went there by tram…

Another review, this time of a slender publication on the LSWR's 'Withered Arm', their lines in the English West Country that penetrated the territory of the Great Western to Bude and Padstow, the destinations of the "Atlantic Coast Express"...

I'm reading The Dreamland Express, a delightful children's book written and illustrated by H R Millar in 1927; my copy is a 1989 reprint. It's been on my railway bookshelf for many years and I've finally got round to looking at it. It's rather good. I wonder if the makers of "Polar Express" read this book and got any ideas from it?

I just finished Memories of a Gandy Dancer. The author worked in that capacity for 38 years on the AT&SF and later the BNSF. I thought he did an excellent job of describing the many aspects of railroad track maintenance.

I spent a while reading a vintage book on Austrian locomotives, Östrerreichs Lokomotiven und Triebwagen in Wort und Bild ('Austria's locomotives and railcars in words and pictures'), dating from 1954. Very much a publication of its time, produced in an economy recovering from war but possessing some degree of charm.

Is it fair to include fiction? I'm re-reading Terry Prattchett's Raising Steam, a good chance to combine my enjoyment of his Discworld series with my passion for steam railways!

>22 John5918: Why not? My favorites in that regard are Held for Orders and The Nerve of Foley - both short story collections published at the turn of the last century and ones which I have read and re-read over the years.

>22 John5918: I had issues with Raising Steam, though for the most part those were down to Terry's embuggerance, it being one of his last novels. The railway parts of it were quite good, as he took advice from one of his local heritage railways, but his prose was quite stilted and the plot seemed to be throwing almost everything into the mix for the sake of it.

What I found much more endearing was a tie-in companion volume, Mrs. Bradshaw's Handbook to travelling upon the Ankh-Morpork & Sto Plains Hygenic Railway, which I can recommend.

>24 RobertDay:

Yes, I agree with your assessment, and I also love Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook. It's on my bookshelf and maybe I should re-read that next.

I've now completed both of Pratchett's excellent railway offerings, and the influence of his heritage railway advisors is clear, although in my own thirty years of restoring, maintaining and operating heritage steam locos I have to confess I'd never heard of molybdenum disulphide!

I've also just finished re-reading The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin, an amateur detective story featuring a young locomotive cleaner and aspiring fireman and driver in 1903. In case you're wondering, there was a real Necropolis Railway which transported coffins and mourners from a separate station in Waterloo to Brookwood Cemetery from 1854 until 1941. I believe this is the first of a series.

Just finished The Blackpool Highflyer, the second in the Jim Stringer Steam Detective series by Andrew Martin. I like the railway content and the period slang. It's a little slow going, perhaps because he tries to write in the style of the period, but that in itself is interesting.

Find of the day at a model railway exhibition: H.M. le Fleming's International Locomotives - a collection of paintings of engines from Britain, Europe and the USA produced for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London - for the princely sum of 50p! A fairly scruffy copy, but worth 50p of anybody's money.

Over the past few years, I've been reading up on Irish railways. I've increasingly found that adding to my understanding of Ireland's railways has increased my knowledge of British railways: the connections between the two are closer than you might think.

This book was my most recent excursion into this subject. O.V.S. Bulleid designed an advanced locomotive that burnt turf as fuel for the Irish transport undertaking CIE in the 1950s. But the story links to all sorts of other things:

A little while ago, I acquired a Belgian book on the miniature engines that were used on the railway at the 1935 Brussels Exposition. I say "miniature", but they were built to run on 500mm (nominal 2 foot) gauge and so were around half the size of a standard gauge Pacific, give or take a bit.

Being of a "useful" gauge, come World War 2 and they fell into the hands of the Organization Todt and they went into industrial service. One survives in Poland; another was recovered from an industrial site in France and is now back in Belgium.

My review:

>30 RobertDay: Fun, I didn't know about those!
I do remember reading that the miniature railway enthusiasts in England in the early 20th century (Greenly, Basset-Lowke, and the rest) who eventually created the Romney and Ravenglass lines were quite split between the ones who favoured scale models and the ones who thought miniature trains should be built to do "useful work". I forget who was on which side...

Talking of "useful" gauges, last year I wrote a review in the Sudan Studies for South Sudan and Sudan journal of Alan Keef's The Gezira Light Railway. One of the little snippets of information was that the gauge chosen for Sudan's Gezira Light Railway in the 1920s was 2ft/600mm largely due to the amount of World War I surplus material available at the time, and the fact that one of the consultants they used was a certain Lt-Col Alan Birch who had railway experience from the Western Front.