There exists an astounding number of enthusiast works on railroads, which are radically different from other forms of transportation, whether steamboats, buses, or airplanes. Altogether these probably exceed five thousand titles. What sparked the publication of fan books was likely Mixed Train Daily: A Book of Short-Line Railroads by Lucius Beebe, which appeared in 1947. Since then, there has been an explosion of works: Arcadia Publishing Company and Morning Sun Books, for example, have produced scores of highly specialized railroad titles, often heavily illustrated. Frequently they focus on minutia. These books might cover the history of an interlocking plant, tunnel, or a single steam locomotive. Take for example Kevin P. Keefe’s Twelve Twenty-Five: The Life and Times of a Steam Locomotive, the narrative of Pere Marquette locomotive No. 1225.
Also popular are pictorials, and the best reveal artistic sophistication. Two outstanding works have been compiled by Jeffrey T. Brouws: The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy and A Passion for Trains: The Railroad Photography of Richard Steinheimer. Equally elegant are David Plowden’s Requiem for Steam: The Railroad Photographs of David Plowden and Tony Reevy’s O. Winston Link, Life along the Line: A Photographic Portrait of America’s Last Great Steam Railroad.
