Customer Reviews

Revisiting the Long Island Rail Road, 1925-1975 (Images of Rail)

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I hesitated to purchase this book thinking that it might be a rehash of
the authors' first book "The Long Island Rail Road 1925-1975". It was
not! The abundance of new photographs was a delight ( 2 per page). Text is written under or to the side of each photo making hunting for text specific to a photo unnecessary. In this book, greater emphasis is placed on diesels in service between 1955-1975. There is good coverage of ALCO models RS1 and RS3, C420's, and S2's. Coverage of Morris Park shops is excellent. The extremely dangerous "gauntlet" track is discussed with a photo of one, as well as the "cabaret" and business cars in service at the time. This book is another Keller & Lynch winner.

In the edition I bought (from a source other than Amazon), much of the photographic reproduction is poor - so poor that many of steam locomotive wheel arrangements can't be determined even from side-on pictures taken in broad daylight. I own dozens of Acadia Publishing books, and this book is by far the worst in terms of picture quality. For example, I know that Long Island Rail Road G5 class steam locomotives are Ten-Wheelers, but I can't tell that from the two photos on page 34.

The pity of it is that authors Keller and Lynch have found some real photo treasures: the Baldwin-Westinghouse diesels #403 A-B are usually shown in builder's photos in other Long Island Rail Road books, but on pages 47 and 48 we see "Mike and Ike" in service.

As the other reviewer correctly noted "Revisiting..." does not duplicate pictures in the author's earlier "Images of Rail: The Long Island Rail Road." If, like me, you simply must own everything published about the LIRR, by all means buy the book. But think about whether you can live with the muddied photo quality. Acadia really did the book's authors a disservice.