Over the long holiday weekend, I took the opportunity to explore parts of my collection I haven't perused in awhile and happily rediscovered my copy of "Steam Spirit" by Nils Huxtable and Thomas Schultz.
Published in 1985 by Steamscenes in conjunction with Norfolk Southern, the book is a softcover landscape format affair documenting the legendary Southern/Norfolk Southern steam program. Fully illustrated in color, it features spendid photographs of the majority of locomotives which had been operated as part of the program up to the date of publication. Represented are the 750, 4501, 610, 2839, 4449, 722, 2716, 611 and the 765. I was a regular passenger of the specials operated out of Alexandria and was fortunate to have ridden behind several of them. In addition to those locomotives listed above, on a trip to Front Royal in 1981 we had the former Canadian Pacific 1238 which, along with an FP7, substituted for the scheduled but unavailable 4501. Surprisingly, I never did get to ride behind the 4501. Of course, at the time of the book's publication in 1985, the program was alive and well and the 1218 had yet to debut.
The book is 32 pages in length and a generous number of the images are printed in full page format. For those of us who were blessed with the opportunity to patronize the excursions before the program was terminated, it serves as a wonderful souvenir of our treasured experiences aboard these very special trains. The OGR Forum appears to be populated with numerous enthusiasts and I believe this book would be worthy of the hunt for most. Watch for it at shows and on line. I think you'll be pleased with it.
Bob
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