Bill Hayes. Steam Trains of the World (1981)

     Bill Hayes. Steam Trains of the World (1981) The title’s a misnomer, since most of the book deals with England. True, English engineers pioneered the railways, and railway practice around the world bears the signs of English dominance in the early development of rail. But a book with “world” in it title should have more than half of its pages devoted to railways outside of the British Isles. I read the captions, and the few paragraphs of text. The book has the usual selection of old pictures, and the captions display a reasonably thorough and accurate knowledge, especially of British railways. But a few silly mistakes about US railways cast doubt about the reliability of the information about other ones. Still, it’s a nice book, and some of the photographs are spectacular. A good basic resource for the middle grades, so long as the student doesn’t pay too much attention to the “interesting” trivia, where the mistakes show up. ** (2003)