Finally a book about the rest of the train! Locomotives get all the attention, but it’s the cars behind the engines that make the money.
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“Railroad Rolling Stock” by Steve Barry is a good introduction to the different types of freight cars, and shows each type “in the wild” with some text to explain what they do and why each particular car evolved. Passenger cars are represented as well.
Steve Barry has been a railway photographer and railfan for his entire adult life. He has been the editor of Railfan & Railroad since 1998, is a frequent contributor to Passenger Train Journal, and has authored five books. He knows trains.
I bought this book at a used book store in Kenora, Ontario – Elizabeth Campbell Books also known as the Darlington Gallery. It’s quite a place – well worth a visit!
This is a great book to toss in your camera bag and read in between trains. It’s fairly small in size but packed with lots of photos and information.
My only criticism is that I would have liked to see more photos of the cars themselves and less photos where the locomotives are front and centre and the car in question is in the distance behind the locomotives. A few of the photos were clearly railfan photos that happened to include the specific type of car in the train. For some of the older car types, the photos were taken in museums, since that’s the only place they exist any more.
That small quibble aside, this is a good little pocket book and the picture quality is excellent.