THE REAL BOOK ABOUT TRAINS

Here's the sort of train book I've been looking for,- a book that combines history, bits of biography about the men who helped bring trains from the earliest smoke spouting engines to the powerful locomotives today. The text doesn't stop with engines (and men) but tells the machinery behind the scenes, what makes trains run on schedules, how supervision is exercised all over the vast network, what the standard agreements are that make it possible to go anywhere and ship freight anywhere. There is enough of the technical side, succinctly told; enough too of the adventure.