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Machines of the Future: Ultimate Trains |
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Written by Andrew Leonard
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Monday, 28 March 2011 23:22 |
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 Ultimate Trains, the latest in the Machines of the Future series of educational children’s books from Kids Can Press, made me smile. The book begins with a concise but quality history of trains, going from the wheel, to grooves in Roman roads, to flanges, to the steam engine and beyond. It then moves on to its focus, which is modern and future trains. Interspersed between the short chapters are do-it-yourself scientific tasks that children can perform at home, such as creating a steam engine, or building their own maglev train. These seemed very well explained and fun.
But what really made me smile was the art. The very first thing I thought as I opened the book was, these pictures would have been fun to trace when I was ten! The art is well done, and I know that, had I had this book back then, I would have started tracing and drawing pictures from it right away. They are always educational and accurate.
I liked that the book doesn’t seem to have any agenda beyond trains being awesome. I don’t read too many children’s books, but it was nice that it simply focused on how great trains were, rather than getting into energy issues, scaring kids, or money, though energy and the cost of certain rails were mentioned a couple of times, in purely relevant settings. It even made me be enthusiastic for some of these trains for their own sake.
The book goes from steam engines to diesel, from electric to magnetic levitation. It’s pretty up to date, including information on the Shanghai Maglev Train between the city and its airport. But it doesn’t stop there. The book goes on to future uses of rails and trains, such as particle accelerators, methods of launching craft into space, and my personal favorite, a vacuum tube underneath the ocean. I’ve been a fan of this notion ever since I saw it mentioned in favorable terms (as in, “it’s possible to build this now”) ten years ago. A tube under the ocean, held in place by cables and evacuated of air, where maglev trains could travel up to 5,000 miles per hour, dropping the travel time between New York and London to under an hour. Though, the book goes for a much more modest (but no less exciting) idea, of linking New York and Boston through an underwater tube rather than by overland rail, cutting the time between those cities to a commute-friendly 45 minutes. The mere fact that this kind of idea was in a book made me respect it and the authors more. Finally, if anyone was unsure about the terms in the book, there’s a glossary in the back.
I recommend Ultimate Trains for any child – it is educational and fun and would be especially appreciated by those with an interest in trains, science, or anything futuristic.
Machines of the Future: Ultimate Trains
Written by Peter McMahon, illustrated by Andy Mora
40 pages, every one of them illustrated
Published by Kids Can Press, 2010
www.kidscanpress.com/machinesofthefuture
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Colorado Covered DVD Collection |
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Written by Tom Daniels
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Friday, 14 January 2011 07:46 |
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Consider having in your DVD library a collection of videos featuring virtuality every mainline, branch line and tourist line operating in the State of Colorado during the last decade of the Twentieth Century. COLORADO COVERED 1, 2, & 3 do just that.
 The three part DVD series covers the northern part of Colorado in Volume 1, the central part of the state in Volume 2, and the southern part in Volume 3. The idea was conceived by author James “Jim” Jones (Denver & New Orleans (1997) and Sterling (2000) by Sundance Publications,) a former Colorado resident who moved back to his native Vermont and has spent the last ten years compiling all his video into this three part collection.
The series is professionally produced with titles, narration and musical bridges. The editing and scene dissolves are superb. Each volume is between two to two and a half hours and priced about the same as a recent release movie ($25 each.)
I had the pleasure of reviewing Volume 2 (Central Colorado) which covers much of Denver, Colorado Springs and the Joint Line. See the BNSF mainline east of Denver, the evolution of the Rio Grande, Southern Pacific and Union Pacific. Snowplow action on the UP (Salina Subdivision.) The Denver Rock Island and other Denver branches. RTD’s light rail, the Henderson Mine trains, Deseret Western, Grand Junction, Craig and Aspen branches, coal line branches (Oliver,) Montrose, Glenwood Springs, Georgetown Loop, Golden (Coors) branch, the Joint Line, Colorado Springs and branches, Fort Carson Railway, motor car runs on the old Rock Island east of Colorado Springs, M&PP and many more.
In a few places where video was not available, still photography was substituted but this is kept to a minimum. Much passenger train action is included with Amtrak’s California Zephyr and the Rio Grande Ski Train. Also UP’s passenger fleet on the Joint Line with their No. 949 A-B-A combination.
 It was a real treat watching so many trains from so many railroads in so many places in Colorado, I couldn’t stop the DVD player until it was over! I highly recommend this volume to all Colorado fans who want to remember this slice of railroad history during all the mergers showing nearly all the generations of motive power and color schemes there were.
It is available at the Colorado Railroad Museum, most model railroad shops or direct from Tell-Tale Productions, P.O. Box 808, Colchester, VT 05446 and www.railroadvideodvd.com. Each volume is $25 which includes shipping or get all three together for $50. |
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Locomotive 315: The Lives, Times, and Rebirth of an 1895 Steam Engine |
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Written by Andrew Leonard
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Monday, 08 November 2010 00:30 |
 Several of my past reviews have remarked that I’ve gotten books with a laser focus on their subject: the history and sights on each milepost of a rail line; a book focusing entirely on the fate of locomotives lost in a flood; a huge illustrated history of a dead rail branch. With this latest book, Locomotive 315: The Lives, Times, and Rebirth of an 1895 Steam Engine by George Niederauer, I’m now convinced it’s not chance - it’s just something railfans do.
I will admit this up front: I have not finished this book. It would take be six months to fully read this 510-page tome. However, I have still read enough to tender a review, which is to say that this is an exceptionally well-crafted book. Its focus is on Denver & Rio Grande Western No. 315. The locomotive was built in 1895 for the Florence & Cripple Creek Railroad, purchased by Denver & Rio Grande in 1917, retired in 1949, and rehabilitated from 2001 to 2009.
The first part is the history, not just of the engine, but of everything relating to it: The F&CC, D&RG, the town of Durango, and even the movies the engine has starred in. This section - 143 pages worth - could easily have been a separate book, but here it’s just the establishing shot for the main event, which is part 2: Restoration. Every single aspect of the nine-year restoration process is documented and illustrated in more than 200 pages, with dozens of beautiful color photographs and lots of retrospectives from members of the restoration team.
The third part is the technology. A relatively shorter section at 80 pages, this explains the roots of steam engine technology, the refinement of items such as the boiler and gear, and an extremely detailed treatment of the technological specifications and revisions of 315. Due to its placement in the book, after the climax of 315’s return to service on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, it almost feels like a lengthy denouement, but it is definitely part of 315’s story and simply finishes out the entire work. And, thankfully, a large index and glossary are included, including - I wouldn’t expect any less from the book, at this point - very detailed diagrams of the engine, pointing out the parts and their names.
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Union Pacific’s Plainville Branch: An Illustrated History |
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Written by Andrew Leonard
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Wednesday, 22 September 2010 06:53 |
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 If you have seen my previous reviews in this paper, you know I’m someone who appreciates exhaustive, even obsessive research. So when I opened up a package and saw Union Pacific’s Plainville Branch: An Illustrated History by Larry D. Dilts and flipped through it, I knew I’d enjoy it. It takes an extensive and specific look at the Plainville Branch of the Union Pacific, which ran from Salina to Oakley, Kansas, by way of Plainville and Colby. It opened in 1888, but the only part that remains today is part of the westernmost leg between Colby and Oakley. Despite it being only about a single 225-mile long branch of the railroad, it manages to fill around 380 pages with black and white photographs.
Virtually the entire book, apart from the foreword, is made up of interesting and well-captioned photographs spanning more than a century, from every part of the line. It is arranged by county, and you get a definite feel of the train leaving the more urban area of Salina and moving into sparsely populated (and becoming sparser every year) west-central Kansas. The pictures illustrate both the railroad in its late-19th and early-20th century heyday, and its modern situation, usually involving overgrown or removed rail, or a decrepit depot. Sometimes it’s just a picture of weeds growing through track heading into a field in 2008, next to a picture of a derailed train in that same area in the 1900s, or a series of photos showing the same building, from the same angle, decades apart. The last chapter is dedicated to the extreme weather the area experiences, showing the effects of flooding, hail, dust storms, and blizzards on the branch, and showcasing the specialized hardware used to deal with snow.
The foreword gives a detailed history of the construction of the branch, how it was financed, and how routing decisions were made. Along with that are some maps, both vintage and custom, showing the overall situation of the branch, as well as - and I liked this part - diagrams of every yard on the branch. This is the kind of meticulous, include-every-single-thing-you-can-find-out research that I really enjoy, even if I’m not familiar with the object being researched.
The book is not without its shortfalls; some of the writing needs cleaning up, with a few punctuation and spelling errors. But apart from that, if you’re at all interested in rail history, then you would probably enjoy this, what must be the definitive photographic history of the Plainville Branch.
Union Pacific’s Plainville Branch – An Illustrated History
By Larry D. Dilts
395 pages
Self-published via Lulu.com, 2010
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Vis Major, a novel by Martin Burwash |
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Written by Glen Brewer
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Wednesday, 25 August 2010 01:39 |
 This is story of men and of their epic battle. The men are railroaders of the Great Northern Railroad; the battle is with an unprecedented snowstorm in Washington’s high Cascade Mountains. Through the author, the reader grows to know these men too.
One hundred years ago (March 1, 1910) the tiny railroad town of Wellington, at the west portal of the original Cascade Tunnel, was struck by a massive avalanche during an unrelenting snowstorm. Two passenger trains and other cars and equipment, stranded in the tiny railroad yard, were swept away at the cost of ninety-six lives.
The story of the Wellington disaster has been a lifetime passion of the author who has grown to know many of the key railroad men well through his research. He has also grown to know the territory through many photographic journeys to the area. Well enough to tell the story, in their own words, thoughts and actions. The reader also grows to know and care about these men, their unrelenting efforts, deprivations, agony, fate and the grief among the survivors. Despite super human efforts, tragedy struck. Many of the men are listed in the epilog as “killed” or “injured.”
This is a well researched fictionalized account, of actual events leading up to the massive avalanche at Wellington. Fiction only in that the story is told through the eyes, words and thoughts of several key railroad employees. As the story unfolded, I found myself caring enough to refer to the epilog repeatedly, hoping to find that man listed as “survived”. The last evening I couldn’t put the book down until I had finished. At the end, I felt a sense of loss (both for the men and because I couldn’t go on reading). |
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