Customer Reviews

Western Pacific Locomotives and Cars, Vol. 1

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Let's be clear the title of this book is "Western Pacific Locomotives and Cars - Vol1" and that's what you get.

Obviously aimed at Rail Fans and Railway Modellers, real and virtual (Train Simulators) this book is an absolute Silver Mine of information. Patrick C Dorin has written a very useful and informative book here .....BUT it could have been a Gold Mine.

The only BUT is some of the photoraphs, or to be precise the reproduction of the photographs. Bearing in mind there are many excellent collections of railway photographs online now it's easy to see that the enthusiasm for their subject was not always matched by some photographers ability. Online that's not a huge problem because you can download the picture that interests you and tweak to your hearts content until you get it looking as good as possible. NOW if TLC publishing did this with (some of) the pictures in the book then the print process has not been kind to their efforts.

However that's a criticism on parts of what is overall a very good book. It's packed with all sorts of little gems of information and has good maps and diagrams too.

Put it this way I searched out and bought Volume 2 where the vast majority of the pictures are better. It may be that I got a duff copy so don't let this influence your decision to buy it.

There are decent colour sections in both volumes and it has to be said that California's sunny climes and Western Pacifics later Dark Green livery don't make for an easy photograph exposure wise!



I was impressed enough with these two volumes to go searching for other titles by the same author.