Some Trains in America (Photography) [Hardcover]

Andrew Cross (Author)

Book Description

Series: Photography | Publication Date: April 2002

Ever since he was young, Andrew Cross has been crazy about trains, travelling on them and spending hours watching them speed by. This book chronicles his nearly 4000-mile rail adventure across the United States. Presented in a landscape format, Cross's panoramic photographs capture trains bisecting endless prairies, snaking through small towns and silhouetted against the mountains. The photographs are organized geographically in seven sections.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Cross sets his oblique eye on the land and captures a whole new vocabulary of landscape imagery." -- The Times

From the Publisher

Ever since he was a young boy Andrew Cross has been crazy about trains, travelling on them and spending hours watching them speed by. "Some Trains in America" chronicles his nearly 4,000-mile rail adventure across the United States.

In a unique oblong format Cross’s panoramic photographs capture trains bisecting endless prairies, snaking through small towns, and silhouetted against the mountains. Organized geographically in seven sections this series of color images evokes the mythology of America, and illustrates the part trains have played in opening up the West. It is a powerful reminder that America ’s adventurous spirit endures to this day.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 156 pages
• Publisher: Prestel Publishing; 1 edition (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3791326791
• ISBN-13: 978-3791326795
• Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,980,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Workin' on the railroad., October 28, 2003

By 

Robin Benson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Some Trains in America (Photography) (Hardcover)

The first thing you'll notice about this book is the shape, just over twelve inches wide by six and a half deep, just the right landscape size to show very long freight trains. This is not really a book for train fans though, photographers like the brilliant Greg McDonnell, Gary Benson or Gary Dolzall have produced much better train imagery but Andrew Cross uses freights to say something about the American landscape, the German photographer Lothar Baumgarten approached the subject in much the same way in his excellent book 'Carbon'

Most of the photos have part of a train in them, some are just of tracks in the country or suburbia. The seven sections cover southern California, Texas, Appalachia, Northeast, Midwest, Northwest and finally central California. I think the best photos are the ones taken in the west with an empty prairie where you can see six (or sometimes ten) diesels pulling a mile and a half long consist, either boxcars, trailer-on-flat-cars or monster unit coal trains. The section on central California is interesting because Cross shows the area around Tehachapi Loop (but unfortunately not the Loop itself, where freights circle and go over themselves) and the trains seem to merge into the landscape, even the eye dazzling Santa Fe's or the yellow Union Pacific diesels. Overall an interesting collection of photos that support the photographer's point that freight trains are an everyday part of the American scene.

The production of the book is worth commenting on, the shape is fine but the typography is rather quirky, the page numbers are presented as four numerals, 0084 or 0140 and the first page of the seven sections has the number filling the whole left hand page, the captions use arrows to show which photos they apply to even when the photo is on the next page. All this is a bit of designer whimsy and not really necessary in my view.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.