Jeff Wilson. Great Northern Railway in the Pacific Northwest (2001)

     Jeff Wilson. Great Northern Railway in the Pacific Northwest (2001) Another in the Classic Trains series. Kalmbach seems to have overestimated the market for these books, since I got this deeply discounted. Anyhow, it’s worth a read. Wilson has a good sense of how to arrange the facts and pictures (which are very well reproduced.) He doesn’t give quite enough information; I prefer the BRMNA method of extended captions to the pictures. There are not enough trains-in-the-landscape pictures, which is as much an effect of the photographers’ preferences as of the editors’. Film was expensive the b/w days (a 3x5 photo cost the equivalent a $3-$5 in today’s money), and the photographers naturally wanted to get nice closeups of the locomotives -- never mind the rolling stock, or the mountains. Nevertheless, I’m happy to have this book in my library. The Great Northern is one of my favourite railways, maybe because of the mountain goat herald. **½ (2005)