I wanted to thank member Nicole (Not Quite Dead Yet) - in a thread earlier this winter, you recommended a book about railroading, "All About Railways". I looked it up, found a copy from a used book seller, and have been enjoying it greatly.
For those of you who don't know, it's a hardbound book published in 1910. It's over 2" thick and almost 400 pages. As you can see from the cover illustration, it is mostly about British rail, although it does occassionally give grudging mention to Canadian and American railroad accomplishments - and of course everything covered is all prior to 1910!
The book is subtitled "A Book for Boys", so (despite the obvious archaic sexism) it's easy enough reading, although sophisticated enough too, for all that - young people in 1910 were apparently expected to have a pretty good command of language and reasoning skills. It has chapters on how locomotives and various rolling stock are built and operated, a decent simple explanation of how a steam engine actually works, what signals mean and how they work, and plenty of statistics on longest, biggest, highest, most expensive and so on. Details on the boring of the great European tunnels (cool!), building of bridges, lots of fun stuff. Many photographs (black and white, of course). Explanations of how the railway mail cars worked. The evolution of brake systems, coupling systems, and car lighting, and a good chapter on the Brennan monorail.
All very British, and all very 1910. It's a hoot. A different perspective from more recent and more American books. It can be found on used book sites on the internet, and if you can find a copy and you are interested in this kind of thing, it's worth the price. If you model 1920's era or are into prewar tinplate or British or Continental European rail, there is a lot of very pertinent information here. Also just a very fun read, a few pages every evening. Thanks Nicole, good call!
