Customer Reviews

CSX (MBI Railroad Color History)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

THIS IS BY FAR THE BEST BOOK WRITTEN ON THE CSX RAILROAD COMPANY TODAY. BRAIN SOLOMON TAKES YOU ON A GREAT JOURNEY THROUGH 25 YEARS OF CSX COLOR/B&W RAILROAD HISTORY. THE TRAIN PICTURES ARE JUST PLAIN GREAT, THE PURITY OF THE PICTURES JUST BLOWS YOU AWAY. THE TEXT IS VARY WELL WRITTEN, EASY TO UNDERSTAND PICTURE CATIONS, AND THE OVER ALL LAYOUT OF THE BOOK IS GOOD. BRAIN SOLOMON IS CONSIDERED BY MANY TO BE ONE OF THE BEST RAILROAD AUTHORS OF OUR TIME. YOU WILL BE VARY HAPPY WITH THIS NEW CSX BOOK. 5 STARS!!!!!

CSX (MBI Railroad Color History) by Brian Solomon provides a good overview of how CSX came into being from its predecessor railroads such as Seaboard Air Line, Atlantic Coast Line, L&N, Conrail, and others. The photography is anywhere from good to stunning, particularly in the large format pages of this book. Various photographers contributed their works.

The text, however, leaves something to be desired. There are a few factual disagreements between photo captions and the narrative over the same point, as well as numerous cases where a thesaurus might have elevated the text from pedestrian to artistry. I'm being nitpicky here, but after all, it is a book made of written words so those words should be carefully selected and reviewed by multiple eyes before going to the publisher. This one looked a bit rushed.

Nevertheless, this is a good book to catch up quickly on where CSX came from, how its power fleet evolved, and documents some of the recent history of its ancestors. I have learned quite a bit about the railroad and I am only at page 109 out of 157 pages. I can recommend this book.

Keep in mind that this book bears a published date of 2005, so some things have changed materially since then.

Just a note: On my copy there is a statement on the page that shows the copyright info that there is a system map printed on the end pages. However no map is there. I don't know if this was a printing error or whether there was a last-second change of plans (perhaps the map was not completed in time?).