Trains and Railroads Books

There is nothing here in the history of elevated railways in New York that is not available elsewhere. The personal anecdotes are nothing but filler in this slim volume. The writing style is pedestrian at very best; it reminded me of something written by a college freshman for a beginning English composition class. Spend your money somewhere else.

In this small volume, Mr. Smith manages to inject many warm remembrances and anecdotes, along with well researched history of New York City's growing pains. Peppered with the personal stories of those individuals directly affected by all the changes in mass transit of the past 150 years, this book vividly paints the political climate that shaped NYC and tells how the rise and fall of elevated trains impacted the entire city.

This board book is fairly simplistic, and not the most interesting of all the Thomas books my children have. Using some of the engines at the station, basic color principles are shown. Bill and Ben are yellow, as are the rails of the bridge. James is red, as are the flowers in the flowerbox where he is stopped, etc. Unfortunately, there is little else to hold a child's interest once they've memorized that color and repeatedly pointed out the matching objects. There is no real text beyond the color written at the bottom of the page. All in all, not a very appealing Thomas book to budding and interested little minds.

My apraxic son (2 years old) loves this book! It is the only way that I can get him to say his color words. He needs the simplicity of the pages, plus the motivation of his love for Thomas. Only covers the colors blue, red, green, orange, and white.

This is a great little book. My one year old daughter was mesmerized by the pictures and true to life colors. We have other books in this collection but none of them have caught her eye quite like this one! I think I might order a few more as I can already tell that this book will get much wear!

A good pedagogical concept, to be sure: the explication of opposites. But almost every pairing is problematic. While James indisputably is IN the engine shed, it's not quite clear that Thomas is fully OUT.

And it gets worse. Next, the meanings of EMPTY and FULL are plumbed, but not in a satisfactory way. The carriage Clarabelle is said to be EMPTY, but what we see is merely a carriage with CLOSED doors. It cannot be said from the empirical evidence that the EMPTY assertion is true; it may well be false. On the opposite page, the carriage Annie is labeled as FULL, but what we see are the doors opening and passengers leaving the coach--truly an example of EMPTYING rather than that of the state of fullness.

Things improve somewhat with COMING and GOING, the title concept for the book. Sir Topham Hatt is presiding happily over the COMING of Thomas (but why is his back to Thomas? Is this disapproval?) and the GOING of Percy. But for the concept to be valid, we must presuppose that neither engine is going backwards, as tank engines can do very well.

A better illustration of opposites is UP and DOWN. Bertie the Bus clearly is ascending the hill--no doubt a therapeutic act after his defeat in the race against Thomas--and the yellow car driven by the fetching brunette is obviously coming downhill. But even here questions remain--why has the artist chosen to obscure the woman's face? Is she coming downhill from something of which she is ashamed?

The book concludes on a positive note, with Gordon and Henry demonstrating UNDER and OVER with the happy confidence you would expect from these big engines.

Overall, this book, after a stumbling start, ultimately redeems itself, possibly at the price of having to explain too much to someone still learning to talk. Recommended, but one would be SMART rather than DUMB to buy it USED rather than NEW.

Our son is an absolute rail junkie, and nothing makes him happier than seeing a real steamie (Diesels don't count apparently, we have those at home). We found this books while visiting a rail museum (which we found by chance) when we were on vacation. On that trip we also learned of a bigger better one that was near by, but because we didn't know to plan time for it we didn't get to visit it.

I'm really excited we did find this book, it includes all sorts of tourist lines all over the country. We were surprised to learn of two steamie lines within a hour or two of home. Not to mention many more all over the country. We're looking forward planning to add rail museums and train rides on future vacations. Hopefully with advance planning we won't have near misses with other great museums and train lines.

The other reviewer has a point, in that the information is very terse. Giving a simple description of the company, however with the websites listed you can generally find much more, and more up to date information.

I have been buying the Empire State Railway Museum's Tourist Train Guides since 1999. These have been published by Kalmbach, so I expected this to be a continuation of this series(Number 42). However, this is not the 42nd Annual Guide but something similar from Kalmbach which is half the size of the previous Guide(277 pages vice 454) at the same price. I don't know why Empire State is not doing this after 41 years and I felt that this publication is not up to the standard they set. Gone is the description of Locomotives/Rolling Stock, which I particularly liked. Also missing is Special Events. Many attractions list nothing but Address, Telephone, E-Mail, and Website. In my opinion the 2006 Empire State Railway's 41st Annual Guide(2006 Edition) is a much better choice than this new Guidebook since it has much more information and is only one year old.

these books are fun because you have to lift the flaps to find an item that is featured in each book. I have to do this with my son so he doesn't tear off the flaps but they are fun to do.

The flaps are flimsy and easy for a toddler's hand to bend out of shape. Lifting the flap doesn't add any action to the scene. The illustrations are bland and there's not a lot of action. The trains aren't particularly interesting. I'd recommend "Wave Hello to Thomas" instead.

I just received this book and was really looking forward to a lot of different projects. I was disappointed that some of the projects in this book were slight variations of each other, and in fact there was one project for HO and larger scale immediately followed by the exact same project in N scale.

Overall there is a lot of good information - but I wouldn't total them to be 101

The story still gives me chills after reading it a few times. After I explained to him what it was about, my 6 year old asked me to read it to him anyway, and he was so scared he couldn't go to sleep afterward. It is well written, with quality artwork, but I would recommend it for older kids who enjoy ghost stories, rather than young pre-readers. Even with a happy ending, the Banshee legend is a scary, creepy image. A full passenger train being chased to certain death by a reckless runaway passenger train behind it is terrifying beyond words, even if (or especially if) the pursuer turns out to be a spector.

While the book was a good read, it spent to much time dealing with his friends that he stayed with. He spent way to little time on how train travel works, what his experiences were aboard AMTRAK, and the beauty of traveling by rail. His stay in New Orleans, with a friend, was interesting, but not why I bought the book.

You have to wonder about a guidebook that says "most reliable" and "2005" on the cover but contains details from two years ago.

The "Crossing the English Channel" section is my favorite. The narrative on Page 41 mentions "only three hours to Paris and ... two hours, forty minutes to Brussels", and looks forward to the day when "[h]igh-speed tracks will ... be constructed within Britain". That day arrived in September, 2003, when the first section of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link opened. Paris is already down to 2 hours, 35 minutes and Brussels, to 2 hours, 20 minutes. Curiously, the schedules on Page 44 are recent and do reflect the new timings.

This makes me wonder whether the publisher takes updates seriously -- or just puts in new schedules and changes the cover.

On the plus side, I do think that the book's base city - day excursion approach is useful.

A bit disappointing as the book does not have a detail roster. Many b&w photos of passenger equipment. One section with color photos. Photos are nearly all broadside of various cars. No attempt to cover all classes of equipment owned by C&NW. Rather the photos respresent cars from each type, headend, coach, dining and sleeping. Mostly photo captions with little text. However, it does serve a purpose as a companion book to Dorin's book on postwar C&NW passenger service. Both books complement each other and make up for what each one lacks. Recommend that both books be purchased as a set.