mile, three day trip from Oakland to Reno to Klamath Falls and return. Shots from the vestibule of two AC10s pulling up the west slope of the Sierras are very good. On the second day two more AC’s took the train to Alturas and on Day Three the train headed south from K-Falls behind another AC to Dunsmuir, where a black GS6 coupled on for the last leg home. Quite a bargain for the $30.00 fare! Next, GS4 4443 ran from Oakland to
Fresno via Niles Canyon and Merced. Multi- ple cameras covered this trip, and there’s an especially great runby at the Berenda water tank. Then a June 1957 trip to Los Gatos used 1896 Cooke 4-6-0 No. 2248 dolled up to look even older. This segment features most- ly still images and the only movie footage shows the engine moving light to the round- house at the end of the day. A later trip to Placerville was made behind a 2-8-0 and an SD7; the 2-8-0 was pulled in reverse for about half the trip, but on the return the Consolidation led in low light on its last run ever. This trip was shot from lineside. A December 1957 Sacramento to Reno trip powered by AC11 No. 4274 was shot from the train with lingering views of the engine at stops. Somebody got a few trackside shots on the return climb up the Sierras west of Truc- kee, at Soda Springs, and Dutch Flat. This was the last run of a Cab Forward. Next are a few sequences of a January 1958 trip from San Jose to Tracy using 4-6-2 No. 2475; the runbys in Niles Canyon and clips at Alta- mont and Tracy appear dark. On May 4, 1958, the Farewell to Steam trip used GS6 No. 4460 and 2-6-0 No. 1744 to Woodland and Knights Landing, but only a still of the 4-8-4 at Sacramento is shown and there’s limited coverage of the Mogul on the return trip. Getting closer to the end, No. 4460 ran a few more times in October; one trip went to Santa Cruz and another to Fresno, with the final run returning from Reno on October 19. Only a few short clips of each trip are shown with some stills in varied weather. You’ll enjoy the variety of equipment, in- frastructure, people, and the wide-open spaces of a California now lost to time. This program and last month’s SP Steam Variety are fine remembrances of Southern Pacific steam on well known and more obscure routes. Several of the locomotives shown still exist, including 2248 and 1744.— Tom Kelcec
BOOK REVIEW
Train By Tom Zoellner. Published by Viking/Penguin Group LLC, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014. Hardcover, 348 pages, 6″×9″; $27.95 U.S., $32.95 Canada. Available from your favorite bookseller.
You might expect a highly publicized gen- eral interest rail book from a large publish- ing house aimed at the general public to be somewhat less than interesting to a rail- fan, but in this case, you’d be pleasantly surprised. Tom Zoell- ner tells a good tale, weaving stories of his
trips on passenger trains around the world with the history of the railroad’s develop- ment. The people he meets and the conversa-
tions they have are as interesting as the rail- roading he discovers. On a trip from Scotland to Penzance he
weaves the story of steam locomotion’s de- velopment from Denis Papin to James Watt, George Stephenson, and Richard Trevithick into that of the first iron roads, Stephenson’s Stockton & Darlington and the Liverpool & Manchester, while riding dowdy DMU’s along the original routes. In India he discov- ers that every grade crossing has a flagman and the railroad is viewed as a benevolent employer whose existence is meant to pro- vide employment in the teeming nation as much as to provide transportation services. You’ll be surprised to discover what the biggest challenge to Indian track mainte- nance is. As he rides Amtrak’s Northeast Re- gional, Cardinal, and Southwest Chief routes from New York to Los Angeles, he comments on the state of the carrier, the railroad’s role in the development of Ameri- can music (especially the blues), and how the railroads brought about uniform time- keeping in an era of infinite “local” times. While in Chicago, Zoellner fills us in on the derivation of the city’s name, how the stock- yards and meat packing industry were es- tablished and how, later, a meatpacker Au- gustus Swift facilitated the construction of refrigerated freight cars and their nation- wide support facilities, which allowed fresh meat to be featured on more American din- ner tables. A trip across Russia to Vladivostok in
hard class on the Trans-Siberian features another big helping of anecdotes and history, including how the railroad was used to facil- itate war as well as how it opened Russia’s heartland to habitation. An unfortunate acci- dent on the way to a railway museum cuts this trip short, however, and he never makes it to Vladivostok. In China, Zoellner rides the new railroad to Tibet and talks with officials who explain why the country is investing so extensively in a high-speed rail network, and he explains how the British built China’s first railroad (as they did in India). Back in the Western Hemisphere, he rides an office car and later on the front of the locomotive from Lima, Peru, up the switchbacks to the top of the world in Cerro de Pasco with none other than Henry Posner III. Here you’ll meet a mining mogul who recognizes that he can save big dinero by using the railroad rather than trucks. The author takes a de- tour here to discuss freight railroading and the intermodal revolution that was begun in the ’50s by Malcolm McLean with his ship- ping containers and BNSF’s role in moving an endless stream of those containers inland from the West Coast on the Transcon, as well as how unit trains move coal from Wyoming mines to midwestern power plants, before re- turning to finish his Peruvian story. In the final chapter Zoellner rides Spain’s
high speed rail network at 200 m.p.h. which is in stark contrast to the unthinkable 20 m.p.h. trains traveled at the start of the rail- way age. He contrasts the vibrant high speed rail network to the United States’ compara- tively feeble accomplishments and President Obama’s watered-down and physically dilut- ed $8 billion “high speed rail” program of a few years ago. He notes that while Spain’s system will never pay for itself, the govern- ment thinks the investment is worth it for the reduction in highway and air traffic con- gestion and the social benefits such as turn- ing a three-hour trip from Madrid to an out-
swissdriver_Layout 1 9/10/2013 2:56 PM Page 1
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