Customer Reviews

New York Central Railroad (Railroad Color History)

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

 

 

This is a great short history of the New York Central System. Chapters 1 to 4 deal with the makeup of the system and history. Chapter 5 deals with Grand Central Terminal and New York electrification. Chapter 6 is the steam locomotive fleet. Chapter 7 is the diesel locomotives. Chapter 8 is the electric locomotives. Chapters 9 & 10 are about the freight and passenger service. The pictures used in the book are great. The amount of information is remarkable. If I were to purchase only one book on the New York Central System, this would be the book.

Wish I had this book several years ago to help me plan the prototype layout and what engines to acquire. Highly recommend this book for NYC fans.

The book is well done, and the photos are super.
My five year old can't put the book down. It really shows the NYC in a way that was never seen before, unless you worked for the railroad. If you love trains, you must add this book to your collection.

Already owning the 1999 original edition I decided to buy the new edition because it was expanded. The changes though are not totally to my liking. The print is smaller, the original system map that was from an actual New York Central timetable has been replaced by an unofficial map produced for the book. The book says it has been re-illustrated, which is certainly the case. There are many new photos and post card views. Whether they are better or worse is of course in the eye of the beholder, I for one prefer the older edition's pictures. Perhaps more importantly the new pictures are not as crisp and sharp as the ones in the 1999 edition. At first I thought it was a botched printing but I could not see any evidence of that. Large pictures that take up two separate pages have the same somewhat blurry quality on both pages. I am not in the position to inspect additional copies of the book to see if the printing quality is better in any of them so I only state it as a possible problem. Overall, based on my experience, if you have the older book this expanded edition is probably not worth the price. If you don't have either then consider the 1999 edition if you prefer sharp pictures.

The illustrations of this edition, MBI Publishing, 1999, paperback, are crisp. The book provides information about complex merger history and outline of nineteenth and twentieth century history of company as well as description of routes and motive power and interesting chapter on GCT.
The book provides basic general information of a wide encompassing primer on the topic of this railroad. It does not go into details of track configurations of terminals, yards or stations,nor on the form of any of the many smaller stations and terminals themselves within the system, nor on the detail make-up of consists. But, it is a useful and concise overview of New York Central and its achievements.

If you are a budding fan of New York railroads, this book is a good place to start. It is an easy read with dozens of nice photos.

If you own several other New York Central books, however, you may not find much new here. It could have been written by referencing just two prior books about the railroad, plus a bit of updating from the internet. There are also some pesky grammatical and spelling errors that detract from an otherwise pleasing book.

Recommended for teens and young adults who are just becoming interested in railroad history. "Old timers" and rail experts can probably bypass this one.

Don't publishers employ editors or proof readers any more? This book is full of simple spelling errors and poor grammar, the kinds of errors that a proof reader would find very quickly. Many of the errors are missing or duplicated articles. Others are cases of a plural noun being used with a singular verb or vice versa. Another class of error, common to many books that include photographs, is captions that don't match the photograph in some important detail.

Still, the many photographs in the book are of very good to excellent quality. Most of them are pictures that I have not seen in any other publications. It's unfortunate that the quality of the text and some erroneous captions make the whole thing suspect.