Customer Reviews

Rails Around Houston (TX) (Images of Rail)

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

 

 

If you are a "Train Expert" like Mr. Weiskopf is, you will enjoy this book.
It is an excellent account about the trains in this era (and area). The research is very detailed. Well worth the price. How do I get my copy signed!

This is a delightful book for people who like local history, or even for the general reading public that might like the history of an urban train system. It is full of images of the trains as the system grew, over the years, in what is now Houston and its surrounding areas. These photos are a real discovery, bringing a lot of pleasure to me as I tried to identify present day landmarks in these old pictures.

In a sense, the growth of a train system mirrors the growth of the importance of any community in the USA over the 19th and first half of the twentieth century. Houston became a major transport hub because of its port and railroad. How sad that that fact isn't commemmorated more!

I also enjoyed the text sections, which were well done. But this book is primarily a book of wonderful photos.

This book is big on photos and drawings, but short on paragraphs. The title is serious about "Images of Rail" being the content. For someone looking for a photo album, this book is perfect.

The book is appropriately organized into chapters. Each chapter has a page of narrative followed by relevant pics. The author provides commentary with the pics, and the commentary is often entertaining. For example, how did Houston manage to count 18 railroads for itself, why did early trains hauling cotton have an extra man on top or push their loads instead of pulling them, how was the 188-ton T&NO engine No.982 moved to Hermann Park, why did steam engines carry sand, and how did employers quickly assume the amount of work experience applicants had for the job of brakeman?

Despite these fine features, this book leaves much of the railroad story untold. For that story, books containing many paragraphs are needed.

This book has a lot of good pictures. Really lot of good pictures if you like looking at locomotives. Being an engineer I found the pictures interesting, but they got old after about a hundred of them. The book really lacks much substance that its title would suggest, rails "Around" Houston. I was hoping to see more maps of just where all those old rails around Houston were, and more about what they hauled and their influence on the growth of the city.

Gary W Markham