The Railroad Scene
In the slightly more than two decades since the end of World War II, the railroads of North America have gone through what has been per-haps the most exciting era of change in almost a century and a half of railroading on the continent; changes in the technology of the rail-road so fundamental that it is difficult to avoid the use of the term "revolutionary." The most notable change of all, of course, was the transformation from steam to diesel motive power. Although the diesel-electric played an increasingly significant part after the appearance of the Burlington's epochal Zephyr in 1934, its role remained an essentially marginal one until war's end, when the plants of the major diesel builders produced the flood of mass-produced units that defeated steam; by the end of the 1950's steam power had essentially vanished from North American railroading. Before a continuing decline of long-haul passenger traffic set in during the 1950's the stream-lined passenger train, born in the 1930's, en-joyed new heights of popularity in the post-war period, with such innovations as domes, high-level coaches, and the experimental light-weights, and such bright new names as Calif or-nia Zephyr, Shasta Daylight, and Cincinnatian. William D. Middleton, whose camera work has been familiar to two decades of readers of Trains and other railroading publications, is one for whom the fascination of railroading did not begin or end with the steam locomotive. His THE RAILROAD SCENE then, is a photographic album of the total North American rail-roading scene — of locomotives and trains, of railroad people and railroad places — from coast to coast and north of the border, as the sensitive camera of one man has recorded it during these exciting years of change since the end of World War II. From Rutland Pacifies to bullet-nosed Mountains on the Canadian National, from Coast Line's purple E units to Pennsy GG1's, from Northern Pacific doodle-bugs to the Coast Daylight in steam, or from Hiawatha beaver tails to a Southern Pacific depot bay at Chatsworth, California, THE RAILROAD SCENE is a memorable look at American railroading at mid-century.
Hardback with dust jacket, 22x29cm, 144 pages, black & white photographs
Condition: Good Ex Public Lending Library
ISBN: 9780999007174
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