Vintage Diesel Locomotives Schafer • £ 9.99 • (E) Mainly full colour look at classic American diesel locomotives from the 1930s to the late 60s, covering all types and configurations. 96 nicely produced pages. Around 120 photos. Paperback. Motorbooks International Add to shopping basket

Railroad Signaling Solomon • £24.99 • (A) Good general book on the signalling systems and methods used on American railroads. These started off from British ideas, but inevitably were modified to suit local conditions and ideas. Other than two historical ones, chapters include Manual Block, Towers and Interlocking, Automatic Block, Centralized Traffic Control, Train Control and Cab Signaling and Grade Crossing Signals. Comparisons are made from time to time with British practice, which adds to the interest of this book. Inevitably it is marginally “broad brush” but you do get is very good overview of the whole subject, in a superbly produced book, with enough detail on at least the major railroads’ signals for you to add authentic details to your model railroad - or an informative read if you are just interested in signalling 159 pages. Around 280 illustrations, the majority in colour, diagrams etc. Hardbound. MBI Add to shopping basket

Rutland in Color Jordan • £37.95 • (B) Until I read this book I knew little about the Rutland Railway, a 407 mile Class 1 railroad with 60% of its trackage in tiny Vermont. In 1950 it operated all its services with 47 steam locomotives of which only four 4-8-2s built in 1946 were modern, six Pacifics dated from the 1920s, the remainder, mostly 4-6-0s & 2-8-0s, dated from WWI or earlier. Rolling stock was equally antiquated, and it relied on a manual block system to control trains. When the Rutland ‘modernised’ in the early 50s it needed just 16 diesels, all bar one RS-3 or RS-1 road switchers, to do the job although this was accompanied by the ending of passenger service, and trackage cuts. Abandoned in 1962, parts of the Rutland survive as the Vermont Railway and The Green Mountain Railroad. If ever a railroad deserves to be modelled it is the Rutland - buy this book and see why! 128 pages. Around 200 all colour photos. Hardbound. Morning Sun Add to shopping basket

Santa Fe Chiefs Yenne • £24.99 • (A) This is the story of the Santa Fe’s premier passenger services from the introduction of the Chief in 1926 and its dieselized successor, the Super Chief, in 1935. Also covered are the predecessors of these trains, and especially their contemporaries, the California Limited, El Capitan, the Grand Canyon, and the various other Chiefs, up to Amtrak’s Southwest Chief. Well written and produced, with loads of illustrations, most in colour and often taken from the Santa Fe’s huge number of colourful advertisements for these trains. 160 pages, around 180 illustrations. Hardbound. MBI Add to shopping basket

Pennsy Steam Years Vol. 3 Pennypacker • £ 34.95 • (A) In this book noted Pennsy steam expert Bert Pennypacker takes the reader on a class-by-class tour of the Pennsy’s steam roster. From switchers to local power to the finest mainline freight and passenger locomotives - all in around 200 colour photos. 128 pages. Hardbound. Morning Sun Add to shopping basket

Santa Fe 1940-1971 In Color
Great series which covers the whole Santa Fe system, showing all diesel classes on the Santa Fe to 1971 and as much steam as possible. This is fairly light in Vol.1, but there is a lot more in Vols.2 & 3. Morning Sun at their best! 128 pages and around 200 photos per volume

Vol.1 Chicago to Kansas City • £ 31.95 • (B) Add to shopping basket

Vol.2 KC to Albuquerque • £ 31.95 • (B) Add to shopping basket

Vol.3 Albuquerque-Los Angeles • £ 31.95 • (B) Add to shopping basket

Vol.4 Texas - El Capitan • £ 31.95 • (B) Add to shopping basket

Norfolk & Western .... Steam’s Last Stand Hope Ferrell • £35.00 • (A) Can another picture book on the N & W be justified? Yes - if it is as good as this one. It is a 320 page “photographic study of guts, grime and power as everything from small consolidations and “Mollies” to husky double-headed 2-8-8-2s moved coal to Tidewater and the midwest. This was Steam’s Last Stand”, which will give you a flavour of the text, but the largely b & w photos, some by O. Winston Link, are excellent, as is the reproduction. Plus there are HO scale side elevations of the principal classes, and rather nice ‘fill-in’ sketches, mainly of railroad folk. So - yes, this is good - and will be hard to improve on. Hardbound. Hundman Publishing. Add to shopping basket

Slow Trains Down South Vol. 1 Hope Ferrell • £37.50 • (A) One of the great ‘Classics’ of railroad, or indeed railway, literature is ‘Mixed Train Daily’ published when I was still in nappies (I think) and authored by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg. This focused on the small lines operating mixed trains and, whilst it covered the whole of the U.S.A., was strongly biased to lines south of the Maon-Dixie line. This new book from Mallory Hope Ferrell looks at many of the same lines, which ran “Daily ‘Cept Sunday” in the South’s ‘Bible Belt’. The lines featured are of a variety of gauges, lengths and types - certainly those interested in geared locos won’t be disappointed. Some of the names are magical, although The Brimstone Railroad didn’t dare run through the Great Dismal Swamp (but the Franklin & Carolina RR did). Then there is the Ma & Pa, Ely-Thomas Lumber, Buffalo Creek & Gauley, Mower Lumber (now Cass) which goes to Bald Knob, the one mile long Virginia Central Railway, the Winston-Salem Southbound Railway, Argent Lumber and many, many more all illustrated with excellent B & W photos and some colour; some also full landscape page. This is a book which will provide many hours of quiet study and enjoyment. 287 pages. Around 350 photos, plus sketches. Hardbound. Hundman Publishing Add to shopping basket

Slow Trains Down South Vol. 2 Hope Ferrell • £37.50 • (A) Another beautiful book of B & W photos of little railroads “Deep in Dixie” - Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisianna, Arkansas and Texas. Here you have such genuine gems as the Moscow, Camden & St. Augustine, the Gainesville Midland, the Tallulah Falls Railway, Sylvania Central, the 6.63 mile Talbotton Railroad, the Live Oak, Perry & Gulf, the wood burning Mississippi & Alabama, Sumpter & Choctaw and many others, all here standard gauge, including some un-named railways deep in the forests and gravel pits of Dixie. Lovely! 225 pages with over 300 photos. Hardbound. Hundman Publishing Add to shopping basket

Snowbound Streamliner Church • £34.35 • (A) The weather on Donner Pass in January 1952 was exceptionally bad and eventually lines over the Pass became blocked. However, on the 13th January one line was cleared and a number of priority trains, including the Southern Pacific’s flagship streamliner City of San Francisco were run. Approaching Yuba Pass the City ran into an avalanche off Smart Ridge and was trapped. It was to be three long days before help reached the train, whose passengers latterly endured no heat, no power and little food. In those days long before mobile phones and on-board radios, initially nobody knew exactly where the train was, and the passengers had no way of knowing of the efforts to rescue them. This book gives the full saga of what happened on the train, and how it was rescued - it also gives a concise history of how the SP fought the elements over Donner Pass, and especially the equipment used. 156 pages. Around 180 B & W photos, maps etc. Hardbound. Signature Press Add to shopping basket

Southern Pacific's Salt Lake Division Signor • £45.95 • (A) Traces the long and colourful history of the stretch of the SP from Sparks, Nevada to Ogden, Utah, starting with the pioneer CP in the 1860s right up to 1996. The Southern Pacific is not my favourite railroad, but I have to say that this is a magnificent book, exceeding author John R. Signor, and this publisher's usual high standards; not only is the text fascinating, the quality of the illustrations, 680 B&W and 70 in colour, is exceptional and there are maps by the author. In particular the story of the Lucin Cut-Off across the Great Salt Lake makes fascinating reading - amongst the many other problems it causes, the mineral and salt in the lake mean that the water is so heavy, it can knock cars off the line when wind borne. 478 pages. Hardbound. Signature Press Add to shopping basket

Steam Echoes Beier • £39.95 • (A) The name Glenn Beier may not ring a bell, but the chances are that some of the pictures in this sumptuous book of his B & W photos will. Over fifty years ago Glenn started photographing the end of steam railroading in the western United States, and reproduced here, mainly full page, are around 250 examples of his work. Chapters cover: Southern Pacific, The Sierra Railroad, West Side Lumber, Pickering Lumber, Sacramento Northern, Carson & Colorado and D & RGW amongst others, and the quality of the photographs, their reproduction and captioning are excellent. 288 pages. Landscape format hardback. Timber Times Add to shopping basket

Trackside in the Mid-Atlantic States 1946-1959 Holland & Yanosey • £ 37.95 • (B) There is a heck of selection of railroads here - B & O, C & O, Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, East Broad Top, Erie, Jersey Central, Ma & Pa, NYC, N & W and Pennsy to name just a few. And because of the dates, the vast majority of the photos here are steam-era. Really nice. Standard Morning Sun format - 128 hardbound pages, with around 200 colour photos. Add to shopping basket

Trackside in Search of Southern New England Steam Canfield • £35.75 • (B) Nice selection of 1950s photos twixt Boston and New York, shot on the New Haven and New York Central railroads during steam’s last years. A wider variety of lococ types than one might expect given the period, as well as early diesels, RDCs and electrics on both railroads. Also more scenic variety than usual in this series, especially on the NYC shots. 128 pages and around 200 high quality colour photos. Hardbound. Morning Sun Add to shopping basket

Steam, Steel & Stars Winston Link • £ 12.95 (A) If you love railroads, you will love this book of b & w photos of the Norfolk & Western in its final steam years, taken by O. Winston-Link. Most of the shots were taken at night with huge flash set ups, and the surreal results are quite superb. 150 photos, map, 216 large format pages. Hardback. Harry N. Abrams (Tremendous value, buy whilst you have the chance!) Item Deleted

The Electric Way Across the Mountains Steinheimer • £43.95 • (A) Richard Steinheimer is one of America’s greatest railroad photographers, the electrified sections of the Milwaukee Road were his favourite subject and the Milwaukee had a certain ‘ton’ - when it built its Pacific Extension, and was up against a whole host of other major railroads, it undertook the first major high voltage, long distance, electrification scheme in the world; years later and broke, it survived by running the fastest passenger trains in the world - using steam power. All of these facts combine to create a book with a very high ‘wow’ factor, as Steinheimer combines his own photographs with those of other contemporaries and predecessors to tell the story of the two electrified sections the Milwaukee used to cross the mountains on its line to the Pacific - all 854 miles of them. If that is not enough, the book is rounded off with interesting, amusing and pertinent reminiscences of those who worked on these sections - engineers, agents and the like. The first edition of this book appeared in 1980 - this second edition has some extra text, 20 more of Steinheimer’s photographs (12 in colour), and is beautifully produced by Signature Press. 188 pages. Around 320 photos. Hardbound. Add to shopping basket

The Florida Keys Overseas Railway Zeiller • £33.50 • (B) Don’t kid yourself - this isn’t a railroad book. It is purely about how Henry M. Flagler’s extension of his Florida East Coast Railway from mainland Florida to Key West, by way of considerable bridges and fills, was built. Which is why you will find the full description in the “History of Engineering” section. Add to shopping basket

The Moffat Tunnel Albi & Forrest • £ 9.95 • (F) Fifth, revised, printing of this excellent book on one of the wonders of 20th Century American railroads - the Moffat Tunnel that carries the Denver to Salt Lake City line of what became the D & RGW under the Continental Divide, rather than over it via the incredible Rollins Pass line. Well done 52 page paperback with 114 B & W photos of the tunnel’s construction, and operations over it, maps etc. Colorado Railroad Museum. Add to shopping basket

The Vista-Dome North Coast Limited Kuebler • £48.95 • (A) Fancy a Transcontinental journey? With this book you can almost journey from the 2300 or so miles from Chicago to Seattle without leaving your fireside, but on board the Northern Pacific’s premier passenger train and famous domeliner, the North Coast Limited, which linked these two cities between 1954 and 1970. This really is a very complete history of this epitome of the American long distance passenger train, showing what journeys were like for passengers and crew, detailing the rolling stock and how it evolved or changed, and even covering crew members, down to the stewardess-nurses, in some detail. At 352 pages this is a big book, but it is always readable, helped by vast numbers of B & W and colour photos, drawings and maps. Oso Publishing. Add to shopping basket

Trackside in Search of Northern New England Steam Morrison & Canfield • £38.75 • (B) Steam on the Boston & Maine, Central Vermont, Rutland and Maine Central in the 40s & 50s, plus CN & CP power, and the Green Mountain Railway a bit later. Wide variety of wheel arrangements, including an Atlantic, but all handsome machines. 128 pages. Around 180 all colour photos. Hardbound. Morning Sun. Add to shopping basket

Union Pacific Diesels in Color Vol. 1: 1934-1959 Austin • £37.95 • (B) An all colour look at how UP slowly dieslised between 1934 and 1959, starting with “doodlebugs”, moving on to the “City” trainsets before coming to the classic loco powered streamliner or freight. Coverage is year by year, and is contrasted with the then current steam power and switchers are also covered. The final year also sees the arrival of the gas-turbines. Well done and interesting. Over 200 colour photos. 128 pages. Hardbound. Morning Sun Add to shopping basket

Union Pacific Official Color Photography Book 1 Le Massena • £ 31.95 • (B) The combination of official UP colour photos taken between 1938 and 1958 plus captions by Robert Le Massena make this book a “must” for UP enthusiasts! A lot of steam and early diesels, named streamliners etc. here in around 180 photos. 128 pages. Hardbound. Morning Sun. Add to shopping basket

Union Pacific Official Color Photography Book II Schmitz & Yanosey • £ 34.95 • (A) Second book of colour photos taken by UP’s own photographers and culled from its archives. Most of the photographs in this volume cover the diesel era, with just 8 pages of steam, but you get all the big diesels as well as the turbines, and there are plenty of scenic shots all over the system, including the WP after its takeover. 120 pages, around 200 high quality colour photos. Hardbound. Morning Sun. Add to shopping basket

Santa Fe 3759 Final Run Over Cajon Pass 60 mins • DVD £21.00 On the 6th February 1955 the Railway Club of Southern California persuaded the Santa Fe, then recently fully dieselised, to resurrect one of its Northern 4-8-4s to pull a special from Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal over Cajon Pass to Barstow and return, in one 'Last Hurrah' for steam on the railroad. Photographer J. Allen Hawkins arranged for a team to photograph the special from every possible angle - Hawkins and another rode the locomotive's tender and, at times, Hawkins was on its cab roof (what price that today?) and a genuinely spectacular film is the result. Even better the colours have lasted well, and the cine film has made a good transposition to DVD. If you like American steam, you really will like this film! (It was available as a video during the 1980s) Add to shopping basket

AMERICAN Railroad Videos:

For those of you who want to hear the engine roar, see the trains moving, or even to get a better idea of the scenery around America's railroads, here is a selection of just a few of the best films on video or DVD.

Steam on the Mountain 90 mins • DVD £ 18.95 McCloud River Railroad No. 18 is a low wheeled Baldwin of 1914 vintage still working the same railroad that bought it (although it did depart elsewhere for a while). Here master film-maker Greg Robinson shows her at work on tourist specials in the shadow of Mount Shasta in a very enjoyable film with plenty of cab action and viewing - about half through the glorious Washington State autumn colours in lovely weather, the rest shot in rain, which results in excellent steam and smoke effects. She may only be pulling three coaches, one a home-built double-decker ‘observation’ but the grades on the McCloud River make this ninety year veteran bark ....... Nice! Add to shopping basket

Station to Station on “The Canadian” 120 mins • VIDEO £29.95 The first video shot by Adolf HungryWolf of Canadian Caboose Press (and it shows in places) this is still a fascinating and enjoyable trip across Canada back in 1986, when The Canadian was VIA run but still on its traditional route. Includes interesting side trips and a fair number of early diesels. Also well worth considering if you like American steam are Adolf Hungry Wolf's Cuban tapes listed, because of the way this list works out, in "European and other Railways". Add to shopping basket

Steam Giants across America DVD • £ 14.95 Approx. Running Time 57 Minutes There is probably no greater thrill than to witness one of the massive articulated or Mallet type steam locomotives whooshing by at speed with 100 or more cars, or blasting a column of smoke skyward along with one or two helpers on a long freight drag up a steep grade. Now witness this exciting action across America in the 40’s and early 50’s in full color from photographers such as Robert Flack, Emery Gulash, Tom Strid, and Jerry Carson. With exciting STEREO sound and some music, you will be thrilled as you view action on Union Pacific, Duluth Missabe and Iron Range, and N&W. As an added bonus we have included a few scenes of the last few runs of Norfolk & Western’s 1218, and double headed action with Union Pacific’s 8444. Add to shopping basket

Niagaras Last Stand DVD • £ 20.00 72 mins • colour & b/w • hifi sound • narrated New York Central had chosen it’s Niagara 4-8-4’s in 1946 as the replacement for the famous 4-6-4 Hudson passenger locomotives. Just 8 years later, the Niagaras were running out there last miles inn passenger service as diesels forced them aside. Don Krofta captured the Niagaras and other steam on the Toledo Division as they run their final miles. Then, he continued shooting steam on the Norwalk Branch and later caught some dramatic diesel action in the same territory. If you like steam or New York Central (or both), get this programme. You’ll be amazed at the content. Add to shopping basket

Union Pacific “BIG BOY” Collection DVD • Ref DVD07 • £26.95 95 mins • colour • stereo sound • narrated The biggest American steam locomotives. Only 25 were built, numbered 4000 to 4024, and they are all on this DVD in the most incredible display of steam power ever! A recently discovered film collection of professionally photographed 35mm movie film from 1953, combined with further archive material, makes this new production the ultimate tribute to the Big Boy! Features: Narration on/off and Chapter Menu Add to shopping basket

Hooters on Blue Ridge DVD •  £ 16.95 Running Time 52 mins + 30 mins of stills N&W Y6 2-8-8-2s, As 2-6-6-4s & Js 4-8-4s roar over Christiansburg Hill. • Y6 & A doubleheaders on Blue Ridge with Y6 pushers. • Streamlined J 4-8-4 & K 4-8-2s in passenger service. • The massive steam turbine ‘Jawn Henry’ pushing upgrade. Bonus still photos with loco & whistle background. Highly recommended. Add to shopping basket

Steam on the Northern Pacific DVD •  £ 12.95 Running Time 60 mins Follow the NP as it displays a tremendous amount of steam in the 1940s through this 8mm digitally enhanced colour film. You’ll see incredible train wrecks, great snow scenes and loads of locos such as 2-6-2s, 2-8-2s, 4-6-0s, 4-6-2s, 4-8-4s, articulateds & switchers running in 1940s. Add to shopping basket

Union Pacific’s Mighty Turbines DVD • 46 mins • £21.00 The Union Pacific’s Gas Turbine locos were the most powerful self-propelled locomotives to run on rails. This excellent film tells the whole story from the early steam turbine experiment in 1938 to the experimental coal-burning turbine loco UP built in 1962. All types of turbine are seen in service and there are some spectacular scenes in this colour and B & W film. Add to shopping basket

Street Running 104 mins • DVD • £21.00 At one time street running was fairly common in America - even the 20th Century Limited doing it through the streets of Syracuse - but it is now rapidly becoming a thing of the past. This entertaining film takes a look at 20 locations were railroads continue to run trains down the middle of main streets - and where cars and lorries frequently have to swerve to avoid disastrous collisions with massive coal trains, freights, commuter-operations and even switch crews. Add to shopping basket