CARSTENS BOOK STORE
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The Friends of the East Broad Top will send you a frameable 15¹/₂″×20″ print of Pe- ter A. Lerro’s painting A Beehive of Activity: Rockhill, Pennsylvania in exchange for a do- nation of $75.00 or more which is received before December 31, 2014. This work is the second in a series of paintings which will de- pict equipment and buildings that FEBT has restored since 2001. This one shows East Broad Top Mikado No. 15 in a setting that in- cludes four structures at EBT’s Rockhill Fur- nace, Penn., shop complex that the group has restored. (The 2013 print was titled Action at the Company Square, Robertsdale, Pennsyl- vania.) FEBT is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and do- nations will support FEBT’s work to pre- serve and restore historically significant elements of the EBT Railroad. Checks payable to Friends of the East Broad Top may be sent to the FEBT Restoration Fund Treasurer, 513 Shady Ave. No. 12, Pitts- burgh, PA 15206;
www.febt.org.
NEW PUBLICATION 48 FEBRUARY 2014 •
RAILFAN.COM
Yakima Valley Transportation Company by Kenneth G. Johnsen was recently released by Arcadia Publishing as part of its IM- AGES OF RAIL series. Author of 1979’s Apple Country Interurban from Golden West Books, Johnsen says that so much has hap- pened to the YVT and so much new material has been discovered since then that he “just had to write another” book. This Arcadia edi- tion covers YVT’s history from its very be- ginnings in 1907 as a streetcar line to its ownership by Union Pacific in 1909 through its donation to the city of Yakima by UP in 1985. In between, on the passenger side you’ll see early single-truck streetcars, North Coast Railway (UP) McKeen gas-me- chanical cars, double-truck deck-roofed cars from several builders including Niles, the modern Brill Master Units, and the single- truck cars imported from Portugal in 1974. Various buses used by the company in an ef- fort to economize include Mack and Twin Coach products. On the freight side, there is an excellent variety of photos of Car A in its as-built cab-on-a-flatcar configuration and as a line car; wooden Niles and Jewett box motors Nos. 300 and 301; electric locomo- tives 297, 298, and 299; ex-Terre Haute & Indianapolis 0-4-0 No. 1; and the line’s lat- ter-day Trackmobile. There’s also good cov- erage of off-rail maintenance equipment, in- terior and exterior views of structures such as the carbarn and powerhouse, and a good system map. A complete roster lists every
piece of passenger, freight, and maintenance of way rail equipment along with YVT’s highway buses and trucks. Many fine line- side views dating from the line’s initial con- struction through today place everything in context and the text is nicely fleshed out by the excellent assortment of well- printed photographs and their detailed captions. Following the usual IMAGES OF RAIL format, this 128-page, 6¹/₂″×9¹/₄″ softcover sells for $21.99 at your local bookstore or from Arca- dia Publishing at
www.arcadiapublishing .com or order by phone at 888/313-2665.
BOOK REVIEW
Railroading on the Wabash Fourth District By Victor A. Baird. Published by Erstwhile Publications, P.O. Box 10119, Fort Wayne, IN 46850-0119;
www.erstwhilepublications.com; 260/745-5141. Hardcover, b&w and color, 316 8¹⁄₂″×11″ pages. $39.95 plus $5.00 shipping plus $2.00 for each additional book; IN resi- dents add sales tax.
How many times have you driven over an abandoned rail- road grade and asked yourself,
“I
wonder what that line was like back in its heyday”? As excit- ing and dynamic as today’s railroad scene is, our country is littered with the remnants of once-im-
portant rail lines that are nothing more than an overgrown grade through the woods or a “rails to trails” path.
Every one of those abandoned railroad lines has a story, though, and many times it’s a fascinating one just waiting to be dis- covered. That’s the case with Railroading On The Wabash Fourth District by Victor A. Baird — a thoroughly enjoyable read about the long-gone Wabash main line between Montpelier, Ohio, and Clarke Junction, just west of Gary, Ind. The title page tells us that this is the first volume in the “Every Rail- road has a Story to Tell Series,” and what a story this is. The Wabash Fourth District was com- pleted in 1893 as part of the Chicago Exten- sion and came very close to never being built. Had Jay Gould acquired the compet- ing Nickel Plate in the early 1880s as ex- pected, there would have been no need for the Fourth District. In today’s era of mega- corporations, it’s fascinating to read how a single individual could shape a large part of a nationwide industry like railroading to his will. Having dodged the Jay Gould bullet, the
Wabash was fortunate to have financed and built the Chicago Extension prior to the 1893 Panic. Managing to make it through two plot twists that could have doomed the line before it was built, the line settled into its early life as part of an important main line between Toledo, Detroit, and Buffalo on
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