Railroads, CSA, 1861-65

Curt, 

  The Triumph-series ran from #I to #IX. I have most of them except the last one and one I skipped because it did not seem to have the usual Pennsy level of content.

  All are very good, especially if you are a Pennsy fan. The last one came out around 2007, I believe. Mr. Roberts passed away in 2010.

Tom

P51: Your dad is an artisan.  Wouldn't surprise me if he could build a live steam

model loco, if he wanted to, from scratch.

No doubt. That James Rifle was something he built on a whim, using techniques he was simply curious about. It weighs over 20 pounds.

I've told him several times over the years that I'd have loved to see what he could have done with something on flanged wheels.

I had the best childhood a boy ever could, shooting that 6-pdr at competition shoots (which dad usually won) and blowing stuff up. We hardly ever went to the beach or 'normal' vacations, and instead usually went to civil war forts or museums. My folks easily understood my love of trains, and they indulged that whenever we were near a RR museum we had time to see.

I guess if a kid went to school telling their teacher how they spent their weekends, with stories like mine growing up, child protective service would show up with a SWAT team. But as a kid in the Deep South in the 70s, there wasn't anything all that odd about it.

My layout, in a way, is a thank you to my Mom and Dad, as it takes place in the valley they grew up in, in the year they each would have been about 7 years old. I'm just glad I started it while they're still around to know about it, even though it's unlikely they'll ever see it in person as I live on the opposite side of the country from them and Dad just doesn't like to fly anywhere anymore...

Just a follow up:

Received the George Abdill book "Civil War Railroads" and it's a dandy. If you're interested in learning more about the railroads involved in the Civil War as well as their importance to the war, it appears to be a good read for doing so.  Plus, 200+ pictures as well!  Such fascinating pictures of early railroading!

The Abdill book is great.  It is probably the best collections of Civil War railroading pictures available in one book and the reproduction quality of those photos is good.  There are some problems with the text.  I had a copy that fell apart from overuse.

There are a number of very good books on individual Southern railroads.  For an overview though I would still recommend Robert Black's "Railroads of the Confederacy".  It was originally published in the 1950s.  For those wanting detailed information on specific southern railroads from the internet, there is the site http://www.csa-railroads.com/ .

Thanks for the tip on yet another book, Bill.  I'll have to take a look.

Also thanks much for that website link.  Already learned some more neat stuff!

The elegant, yet primitive, railroading of the era being discussed is fascinating. The overall "look" is compelling to say the least.  So far, the pictures in the Abdill book that turns my crank the most belong to the Orange & Alexandria RR.  Wow... talk about some interesting railroading scenes!

I'll say up front that I don't enjoy Civil War carnage pictures. Fortunately, the Abdill book doesn't have those types of Civil War pics that we've all seen. You know, the pictures with bodies strewn hither n' yon. Very sad. Shame about the war. Such a tragic event.

No, what I am enjoying is discovering new pictures (new to me) of railroading that existed during those years, as well as learning about a bunch of Southern railroads that I'd never heard about before!

Good stuff.

laming, just a thought.  The book Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads, 1828-1860 by Eugene Alvarez covers the immediate pre-Civil War era on the southern roads and it spans the level of detail from the general to the level of the individual train rider.  If you liked Abdill's book (I did too) I think you might find this one to your liking as well.

Thanks for the comments. I was surprised to see that you found errors in the NASA RR chapter. That chapter was based partly on 6 hours of interviews with David Hoffman, former  director of the NASA RR. He also reviewed the text before it went to print. He did not mention any errors.

In addition to the ACW and WW2 chapters you mention, there is also an extensive Chapter on WWI, and chapter on the cold war, and an introductory chapter that covers the whole gamut of military railroading. 

You can find copies of the book at Amazon.com. If you want signed copies, they are available at www.alkemscalemodels.com

Bernard Kempinski

Bernard,

I actually wrote the same thing in an email to you when I first saw your book. It's disappointing how few hobby shops I've seen carry the book (oddly more so that I live in the Pac NW, where there's a huge military persence). In fact, I had to mail order my copy otherwise I'd never have gotten one.

I may have been a tad on the harsh side when I wrote that, but I always err on the side of it being better to be pleasantly surprised than to say, "What shill said this was any good?"

Your concept stretched over a very broad area, and I'm glad you put the focus on the civil war, a timeframe for railroads that is, in my opinion, seriously minunderstood even among train fans. It's clearly the strength of an admittedly overall good work.

WW2 is pretty well covered in several books on railroads. I did notice a postwar M-series ambulance in a photo in your book. No fault of yours, you were using photos from someone else's layout. Unless you are into military vehicles (I am, as I'm a WW2 re-enactor and have a 1944 Willys MBV in the garage), you'd probably never notice an M-43 when that's a 1950s vehicle. Small details, but something you'd notice right away if I put, say, infantry carrying Kragg rifles into a civil war diorama. Your other layout examples were really good; I especially love the line of German POWs being herded into a passenger train (but lacking the "PW" on the backs of each, something that was usually done right after getting the US), noting that many Afrika Korps POWs spent the entire war in camps in the South in full uniform. I've found that POWs in Northern states and in the West often didn't have their German uniforms for the duration...

The NASA chapter errors are small, mostly around the existing track at KSC. I was just there in October and can personally tell you there is no loop of track going past launch facility 39 and what actually is still there is rusted rails that hadn't seen any traffic since well before the end of the Apollo era from the looks of them. They're actually looking into a totally new railroad line into the facility, I assume in anticipation of the SLS (Space Launch System, sort of a Saturn V on steroids) launches in a few years and a renewed effort to get manned launches out of KSC again, as soon as they can get the Orion capsule man-rated for flight. You did miss an opportunity if memory serves to give options for a N scale STS (space shuttle) stack as several companies make 1/144 ones, which would work reasonably well in N scale. Frankly, that would be the ultimate 'crossover' layout for a NASA fan such as myself if I didn't already have a concept I'm as dedicated to as you are to the 1860s...

Lee