New book on steam facilities from Firecrown

I’ve just received my copy of an excellent new book from Firecrown Media (successor to Kalmbach Media and all its assets). This book was created by Jeff Wilson, but as Jeff explains, it really was the dream of former Trains editor Jim Wrinn, who didn’t live long enough to do the project himself.

It really is a very handsome volume, with excellent photos featured throughout. An 8.5 x 11-inch book, it contains 208 pages, and is available for $29.99 at http://shop.trains.com/ . Here’s the cover: 

The book, naturally, draws on the very extensive resources of the former Kalmbach Library, particularly the part associated with Trains magazine (thus the Trains logo on the cover). 

Of course, you have to be interested in steam locomotives to fully appreciate this book and its photographic quality, but an image like the one below is surely quintessential railroading. (It’s Milwaukee Road 2-8-2 no. 354, taking water at New Lisbon, Wisconsin in July 1953; James G. LaVale photo.)  

The many photos of the interiors of roundhouses and shops are endlessly informative, as are the photos showing the scale of such facilities. I enjoyed this aerial view of the Santa Fe locomotive facility at Albuquerque, N.M., including the heavy repair shop at left (Santa Fe photo). This is just one of the numerous double-page spreads in the book; I apologize for the gutter image at center. 

And many of the activities associated with locomotive servicing are shown throughout the book. Here is just one example, showing a Union Pacific self-propelled crane, unloading coal from GS gondolas at a coaling dock. (Trains magazine collection). As the book notes, the Utah Coal Route gondola nearest the camera represents a jointly-owned operation of the the Utah Railway and UP’s Los Angeles & Salt Lake. Originally the UCR owned 2000 of these gondolas.

I continue to browse the book and find more and more interesting and informative photos. Kudos to Jeff Wilson for making this book a reality, and to Firecrown for publishing it in the size it deserves.

Tony Thompson