Trainline issues 1–41 on DVD

The Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society (SPH&TS) magazine, Trainline, has been published quarterly since the mid 1980s (in the early period, frequency was irregular). Back issues in hard copy remain available for many of the issues and can be purchased on the Society’s website, which can be found at: http://www.sphts.org/ , and click on “Company Store.” In the 1990s, the SPH&TS Board of Directors tended to reprint older issues when they sold out, so that they would remain available, but more recently older issues have been allowed to go out of print.
     A long-contemplated project of the SPH&TS now has its first result: a DVD containing the first 41 issues of Trainline in digital form, and of particular importance, a very complete index, which is searchable, to facilitate finding information on particular topics across all these issues. Publications Director Ken Harrison is to be commended for bringing this project to fruition. It is planned that more issues beyond no. 41 will be digitally archived in this way if the first archive volume sells well. (The current issue of the magazine is no. 129.)
     The price of the DVD is $24.95; here is a link to the ordering page for it on the Society website: https://sphts.myshopify.com/products/trainline-archive-volume-1-dvd-issues-1-41 . The issues  on the disc are in PDF format and require Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 or later for access. If you don’t have a copy of this Reader, you can download it for free at: http://get.adobe.com/reader/ . The PDFs are compatible with Windows and Macintosh (and other) operating systems. The DVD package insert looks like this:

      An attractive image was also placed on the disc itself:

     Through the years, Trainline has contained an immense amount of information about the Southern Pacific, from all eras. Though modeling information has been in the minority, the quality of that modeling information is also excellent. This publication is naturally of greatest interest to SPH&TS members and SP modelers generally, but in addition I hope that the general modeling community may wish to avail themselves of this resource. I think they would all find it interesting and rewarding, and the price is certainly modest.
Tony Thompson