Books on North American Railroad

I was at The Curve Borders this morning and just casually walked to the Hobbies/Special Interests section. They had a section on Transportations. Usually you will find books about automobile, airplane, ships, etc. Very rare you will find books about trains. Lady luck was at my side this morning. I found 4 books in North American railroads. Wow! What a bonus.

I sat down on the floor and flipped through each of there. One particular book caught my attention which I would never expect it to be there at all.

This is a coffee table book on BNSF and traced its history back to pre-merger days. It's 290 pages thick but I am sure it is a good reading material. I flipped through some chapters and I am already excited to delve deeper. I hope to find something about the Galveston line.

The other 3 books are interesting too. Here are what I bought.

I have not gone through all of them so I can't give you my review. I will start a collection of railroad books and looking forward to buy a few more especially about Southern Pacific, which owns most of the lines in Texas (SP merged into UP in 1996) and Union Pacific.

It's about time for me to catch up with some reading. My investment today, priceless. For those interested, check out http://www.motorbooks.com/Store/CustomPage_6131.ncm. Don't let the URL deceive you.

Book Reviews: (All reviews are based on this blogger's opinions)
Rail Power by Steve Barry
It took less than 24 hours to finish this book (okay, that 24 hours include sleep, bath and other personal and work activities). Then again, this book is full of color photos and captions accompanying each of the photos. For those who love the various shots of the "lost" American railroad, this is a good book. The book starts with Steam locos followed by Electric and Diesel (-Electric). While I am not an expert in American railroad, this book has taught me the various steam loco wheel arrangements from American 4-4-0 to Challenger 4-6-6-4. What's obviously missing from the Steam category is UP Big Boy 4-8-8-4. Now, how you can NOT include the icon of American steam loco? This I will leave to Steve and the publisher to answer.

Overall, this is a handy book to have and a good pictorial reference of the good old steam-electric-diesel era of the grand American railroads.

The American Railroad - Working for the Nation by Joe Welsh
See my comments in later blog.