Paul Mallery. Design Handbook of Model Railroads. (1979)

     Paul Mallery. Design Handbook of Model Railroads. (1979) This 2nd printing (1983) shows the private car Harold Carstens on John Allen’s Gorre and Daphetid. Very nice photo, and the best part of the book. Mallery writes a wooden and “technical” style, using the passive voice far too much. The diagrams are very small and badly drawn, making them hard to read. The technical terms aren’t explained, the cross references to diagrams and pictures in other chapters interrupt the flow of information, the paragraph sub-titles and sub-section markings are inconsistent, and there are few too many typos. The quality of the information is good to excellent, but the presentation and the explanations are abysmal or missing. Mallery needs a good editor, or better yet a ghost who can rewrite his book. John Armstrong did the whole thing better in Designing Model Railroads for Prototype Operation, and anyone familiar with his work will find Mallery’s book a distant second-rate version of that book. * (2002)