lamdha books -
Catalogue of books on trains, tracks, trams and trolleys

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85293 Allen, Cecil J. Royal Trains Ian Allen Ltd., London, nd. (c.1955) Octavo; stapled pamphlet with illustrated wrappers; 40pp. with many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; retailer's ink stamp to the inside front cover; original printed price obscured by a piece of tape. Very Good. Click here to order $15

90694 Anderson, Janic & Edmund Swinglehurst Train and Transport: A Collector's Guide Bracken Books, London, 1989. Quarto hardcover; black cloth boards with gilt spine titling; 96pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; mild offsetting to endpapers; laminate slightly lifting on head of dustwrapper spine and mild wear to edges. Very good to near fine otherwise and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. The story of travel and transport is preserved on library bookshelves. Less formally but often more graphically it is also documented in the transient paper oddments which it has generated. Here, in tickets, notices, leaflets, labels, folders, billheads and other throwaways, is an epitome of mankind's love affair with the way from A to B. By pack-horse, stagecoach, clipper ship, steamer, penny-farthing, rail, motor and flying machine, not to mention shanks's pony - man has been on the move for as long as he can remember. These fragments are his souvenirs. Click here to order $22

207517 Armstrong, John Locomotives in the Tropics - Volume 1 Queensland Railways, 1864-1910 Australian Railway Historical Society - Queensland Division, Brisbane Qld., 1985. Quarto; paperback; 112pp., with diagrams and many monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; covers rubbed. Very good. Click here to order $30

93170 Belbin, Phil, & David Burke Changing Trains A Century of Travel on the Sydney-Melbourne Railway. Methuen Australia Pty. Ltd., Sydney NSW, 1982. Quarto; hardcover, with illustrated endpapers; 144pp., with many colour and monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; some very minor scraping to the board edges; text block edges lightly toned with some spotting. Dustwrapper lightly worn at edges (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Very good. In nineteenth century Australia, Sydney and Melbourne were the competing capitals of what were different countries, the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. They were as far apart as Paris and Berlin. In 1883 railway lines joining the two Australian cities met at Albury. The celebration was lavish. it was billed as the biggest intercolonial gathering in the continent's history. From now on federation was inevitable. This book is the story of the hundred years of the Sydney-Melbourne railway connection. It is about the trains - the Express, the Limited, the Spirit of Progress, the Southern Aurora and the locomotives who pulled them. Click here to order $40

82686 Burke, David Great Steam Trains of Australia: signed copy Rigby, Adelaide, 1978. Inscribed quarto hardcover, 160pp., mainly monochrome illustrations. Board edges and corners rubbed and scraped; dustwrapper moderately worn along edges and corners with tears on head of spine and upper rear edge, some scuffing. Very good in good dustwrapper (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive archival film and white paper backing). The author traces the development of the locomotives that hauled the expresses, from the underpowered puffing billies of the 1880s with their open cabs and tall driving wheels, through the advent of the heavy engines of the 1900s. He tells of the speeds these engines clocked, the big trains they hauled, and the well-known towns they raced through. He describes the confusion at the break-of-gauge terminals, the hassles at the ticket offices, and the crowding at the refreshment rooms. He portrays the sweating engine crews, the porters, and the stationmasters in their braided caps and brass buttons. Click here to order $45

87227 Burton, Anthony The Railway Empire John Murray, London, 1994. Hardcover, octavo; blue boards with silver gilt spine titling; 264pp., monochrome plates. Minor wear; very good to near fine and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. This is the story of the men who set out from Britain to build railways worldwide. Some were part of Britain's grand imperial progress, tying together the Empire with threads of iron. Others represented a no less potent economic imperialism, building lines with British capital and manpower, keeping British industry busy supplying everything from rails to powerful locomotives, and taking the profits back to Britain as well. The great men of the railway age all play a part: Brunel worked in Italy, Robert Stephenson built a great bridge across the St Lawrence at Montreal and Joseph Locke supervised some of the first railways in France. But the story recalls, too, the heroism of the less well known, labouring in uncharted, hostile terrain against seemingly impossible odds: against man-eating lions, dense jungle, and plains which flooded dramatically in the wet season, precipitous mountain ranges, and inevitably disease. Conditions like these produced personalities to match - men like the contractor George Pauling who built lines throughout Africa, and whose party trick was to run round a billiard room with a pony on his shoulders. Finally there were those who did the hard labour itself, the tough experienced navvies, capable of prodigious feats. A Frenchman seeing them on the Paris to Rouen Railway exclaimed, "Mon Dieu! les Anglais, comme ils travaillent." No country rivalled Britain in spreading railways across the globe, and yet inevitably within this phenomenal success lay the seeds of decline. The benefits of local labour, materials and experience began to outweigh British expertise. The legacy of immense achievement, however, has long outlived the days of empire. Click here to order $22

93167 Butcher, A.R. Specials in Action D. Bradford Barton Ltd., Truro Cornwall UK, 1975. Square octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling; 96pp., with many monochrome photographic illustrations. Minor wear; light spotting to the text block top edge; an old sticker mark to the flyleaf. Price-clipped dustwrapper is mildly scuffed with some marks; light edgewear; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $20

91553 Dargan, James Safe Signals: A History of NSW Railway Signalling James Dargan, 1989. Quarto hardcover; blue boards with gilt front board and spine titling; 225pp., monochrome illustrations. Owner's name and details on pastedown. Minor wear; a few spots on endpapers and upper text block edges; binding very slightly cocked. Otherwise near fine in like dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Click here to order $60

84441 Davies, Hunter George Stephenson: A Biographical Study of the Father of Railways On the Occasion of the 150th anniversary of the opening of the World's first public railway The Stockton and Darlington 1825-1975 including an account of railway mania and a consideration of Stephensonia today Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1975. Hardcover, octavo; green/blue boards with gilt spine titling and green endpapers with decorative train motifs; 337pp., monochrome plates. Lightly toned text block edges with some marks and spotting. Illustrated dustwrapper worn and scraped along edges with a tear on upper front corner and on lower front spine edge. Now protected in archival film with white paper backing. Good to very good. Click here to order $18

67556 Ellis, C. Hamilton The Lore of the Train Crescent Books/Crown Publishers Inc., New York NY, 1987. Quarto; hardcover, with illustrated boards and endpapers; 240pp., with many colour and monochrome illustrations. Moderate wear; mildly shaken; spine extremities lightly softened; light toning and spotting to the text block edges; mild spotting to the preliminaries; previous owner's ink inscription to the half-title page. Dustwrapper sunned along the spine panel and edges; mildly rubbed and edgeworn. Very good. Magnificent large format volume concentrating on the train itself, the machine for actual conveyance, and all its components - steam, electric and oil-propelled locomotives, and passenger, freight and special cars. All important developments in the history of the train are illustrated by detailed drawings, many of them fully and accurately coloured. Click here to order $35

87558 Faviell, Brigadier John The Railway Journeys of My Childhood Pan Books Ltd./Sheldrake Press Ltd., London, 1983. Landscape octavo; hardcover. with gilt spine-titles and upper board decorations, with a torn tipped-on upper board illustration; 112pp., with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Very mild wear; boards lightly rubbed; mild offset to the preliminaries; previous owner's ink inscription to the verso of the half-title page. No dustwrapper as issued. Very good. Brigadier John Faviell was born in 1898, during the reign of King Edward - a period considered by many railway enthusiasts, as the heyday of steam. The Railway Journeys of My Childhood is a remarkable testament to that age: journeys which in the eyes of a child, captured the thrill and magic of steam travel. One of his first 'expeditions' at four years of age was to Hayes Common - a journey of twelve miles: - "We were quite a party. There was mother, nanny, a seven-year old boy, a girl of five and a boy not quite four (me) with our spaniel puppy Jim. Naturally too we had with us all the impedimenta of a picnic: a hamper, a rug, my sister's teddy; and my mother would have had her parasol. This was our trip: first we took a horse tram to Lewisham, then by train (to my great delight) to Elmers End. There we changed and waited for the branch line train to Hayes Station. One memory of that day is absurdly clear: it was of the front view of the incredibly old engine that headed our train. At the time its age was of no consideration. Rather it was a curious feature, not seen before or since, which attracted the interest of a very small boy: a hollow space between the smoke box and the front buffers. Vaguely I see this engine as a 2-4-0 with outside frames and a plain topless windscreen type of cab. It is clear to me now that this small branch line was run by completely antiquated engines and rolling stock. What I saw was probably an engine built as early as the 1860s. It would be understandable for an old warrior with more than 30 years of service to be put out to grass on a small branch line...". Faviell, whose family worked on the railways for generations, recalls it all. The text is accompanied by the author's illustrations. Drawn for his grandchildren (and their children), these watercolours and black and white sketches recall the Edwardian railways in painstaking detail: the platforms, people, fashions and, most importantly, steam engines. The remarkable visual recall of memories of train journeys taken eighty years before is matched by its factual accuracy. The fascination of steam railways which so entranced him is conveyed to us as though a window has been opened on the past; we see what he saw, feel what he felt. Click here to order $18

81781 Fitch, Ron Railroading at its Wildest Kangaroo Press Pty. Ltd., Kenthurst NSW, 1993. Quarto; hardcover; 176pp. with many maps and monochrome photographic illustrations. Minor wear; some very mild edgewear and rubbing to the boards; light spotting to the text block edge; previous owner's ink stamp to the flyleaf. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed. Very good to near fine. One railway historian described Ron Fitch's 46 years in Australian railways as 'railroading at its wildest'. In particular, he was amazed at the remoteness and distances involved; at a construction engineer living in a tent, cooking his meals over an open fire and subsisting for an entire summer on tinned meat, potatoes and onions, bread and jam; at the chief civil engineer of a major railway carrying his swag from rest house to rest house when on track inspection; at his being obliged to travel further than from London to Rome to the site of a derailment or washaway and the same distance back again once the damage had been repaired; or at the existence of a railway system with over 3000 kilometres of main line that didn't cross one permanent stream yet was subject to periodic flooding. In this book the author looks back over those incident-filled years. Click here to order $30

207514 Fluck, R.E., R. Sampson & K.J. Bird Steam Locomotives and Railcars of the South Australian Railways Mile End Railway Museum, Roseworthy SA, 1986. Quarto; paperback; 176pp., with maps, diagrams and many monochrome and full colour illustrations. Mild wear; covers rubbed. Very good. Laid in: a previous owner's hand-written notes on cowcatchers. Click here to order $75

95886 Free, Dan Early Japanese Railways, 1853-1914 Engineering Triumphs that Transformed Meiji-Era Japan Tuttle Publishing/Periplus Edition (HK) Ltd., Tokyo Japan, 2008. Quarto; hardcover; 288pp., with many monochrome and colour illustrations. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. The importance of early railways in the industrialization of the United States and Europe is a fact all of us are familiar with. To witness the amazing parallel development of the railways in Japan, happening at much the same time as America was connecting its vast hinterland to the East and West coasts, is an eye-opening realization. In Early Japanese Railways 1853-1914, Dan Free tells the fascinating story of the rise of Japanese rail amidst a period of rapid modernization during Japan's Meiji era. Leaving behind centuries of stagnation and isolation, Japan would emerge into the 20th century as a leading modern industrialized state. The development of the railways was a significant factor in the cultural and technological development of Japan during this pivotal period. Free's rare photographic and historical materials concerning Japan's early railways, including a print showing the miniature steam engine brought to Japan by Admiral Perry aboard his 'Black Ships' to demonstrate American superiority, combine to form a richly detailed account that will appeal to students of Japanese history and railway buffs alike. This book, Early Japanese Railways 1853-1914, illuminates the early history of Japanese railroads, and in the process the fascinating story of Japan's prewar industrial modernization. Click here to order $50

80920 Goulder, Dave The Golden Days of Steam: CD The Railway Songs Fellside. New. In 1971 Dave Goulder, a former railway worker turned songwriter, released an LP entitled 'Requiem for Steam'. It followed the closure of great swathes of the UK railway system and the passing of steam locomotives. Some 17 years later he produced a follow-up, The Man Who Put The Engine In The Chip Shop' which was a much more positive affair following the setting up of many steam preservation groups. This CD combines the two LPs and is enhanced with actuality railway recordings. Click here to order $26

69310 Kraus, George High Road to Promontory Building the Central Pacific Across the High Sierra Castle Books, New York NY, 1969. Quarto hardcover, 317pp., monochrome illustrations. Owner's book plate on pastedown; browned and spotted text block edges; scuffed and slightly discoloured dustwrapper with scraped and worn edges and corners; some chipping and small missing segment over head of spine. Very good in good dustwrapper and protected with archival film with white paper backing. The dramatic story of the Central Pacific's epic struggle to lay rails across the fearful wall of the Sierra Nevada and the arid reaches of the desert in the face of nearly every natural and man-made obstacle that could be imagined. With the exercise of vision, money and engineering muscle, determined railway men tied the Atlantic to the Pacific with bands of steel that opened up the West and forever changed its history. Click here to order $23

201888 Krieger, Michael Where Rails Meet Sea America's Connections Between Ships & Trains Metro, New York NY, 1998. Quarto hardcover; blue boards with gilt spine titling, illustrated endpapers; 176pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Owner's name stamp. A few scattered spots on half-title page and spotting to upper text block edge. Very good to near fine in like dustwrapper Region by region, "Where Rails Meet the Sea" chronicles the fascinating history of America's railroad and maritime development through vividly detailed descriptions of the railroads' waterfront operation, buildings, facilities, and majestic sea-faring fleet. In addition to these insightful historical accounts, hundreds of rare photographs and ephemera bring to life the rich history and lively character of the American port cities that thrived in the years between 1830 and 1960. Click here to order $30

85145 Levy, Allen A Century of Model Trains Crescent Books, New York, 1986. Oblong quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titling; 208pp., with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; rear free endpaper creased; very faint spotting to the text block top edge. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed and sunned; a small tear and some chipping to the spine panel extremities; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive film. Near fine otherwise. Alan Levy is a renowned, international expert on toy trains. He and Andries Grabowsky created ACE Trains; and was a co-founder of the London Toy and Model Museum. With Andries Grabowsky of the Netherlands, who created toy trains since the early 90s, they developed the initial ACE products, such as the first tinplate E/1 series of 4-4-4 tank locomotives, essentially a reproduction of one the earliest Hornby locomotives powered by an electric vice clockwork motor, produced both in British and French liveries along with a series of compatible tinplate passenger coaches. This book is acknowledged as one of the truly classic works dealing with the varied history of toy and model trains. Click here to order $45

204208 McCarthy, K. The Corrimal Colliery Railway Light Railways Number 60, April 1978 The Light Railway Research Society of Australia, Upper Ferntree Gully Qld., 1978. Octavo; stapled booklet; 44pp., with maps and many monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; covers lightly rubbed; text block edges lightly spotted. Very good. Click here to order $15

204206 McCarthy, K. Gazetteer of Industrial Steam Locomotives Illawarra District N.S.W. Australian Railway Historical Society (NSW Division), St. James NSW, 1983. Octavo; paperback; unpaginated (pp.), with maps and many monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; covers rubbed and spine lightly sunned; top corner of the back cover torn away; mild spotting to the text block edges and preliminaries. Very good. Click here to order $20

207513 McDonald, Keith Steel and Rails in Newcastle Light Railway Research Society of Australia, Surrey Hills Melbourne Vic., 1981. Quarto; paperback; 118pp., with maps, diagrams and many monochrome illustrations. Moderate wear; covers well rubbed and scuffed. Else very good. Click here to order $25

202050 Maskelyne, J.N. A Further Selection of Locomotives I Have Known Percival Marshall & Co. Ltd., London, 1962. Landscape quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine and upper board titles and decorations; 71pp., with a colour frontispiece and many monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; slightly rolled; spine extremities softened; old tape stains to the boards; mild toning and spotting to the text block edges; offset to the endpapers and preliminaries; retailer's bookplate to the front pastedown; some internal marks. Price-clipped dustwrapper is well-rubbed and edgeworn; some chipping to the spine panel extremities; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $75

207556 Meeks, Carroll L.V. The Railroad Station An Architectural History Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 1964. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles on a black label; 203pp., with 96pp. of monochrome plates. Mild wear; slightly rolled; spine extremities softened; text block edges toned; some marks and old tape stains to the endpapers; previous owner's name in ink to the flyleaf. Price-clipped dustwrapper is rubbed and edgeworn; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. The railway station represents perhaps the single most dramatic interface between the human cultural world and major industrial infrastructure. Undeniably, train lines, their vehicles and support mechanisms are ugly and invasive; facilitating the transport of people whilst minimising the effects of this impactful technology is a task that falls to the architect, and this process is covered in detail within the pages of this work. The train station as Statement; the train station as Cultural Icon; the train station as Organic Technological Interface: all of these philosophies have come to the fore in the history of terminus design and those ideas are thoroughly and fascinatingly thrashed out here by the author. Click here to order $40

207512 Pollard, Neville The Story of the Sydenham to Botany Railway Offal, Oil and Overseas Tade Australian Railway Historical Society - New South Wales Division, St. James NSW, 1988. Quarto; paperback; 56pp., with maps and many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; covers rubbed and spotted. Very good. Click here to order $20

90699 Preston, Ron An Era in Steam On the Railways of New South Wales Orion Fine Arts, Strathfield, NSW, Australia, 2001. Landscape quarto; paperback; 112pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear only; near fine. Click here to order $30

90698 Preston, Ron On Southern Lines The Railways of New South Wales - In Steam Orion Fine Arts, Strathfield, NSW, Australia, 2001. Landscape quarto; paperback; 80pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear only; near fine. Click here to order $25

84531 Ransome-Wallis, P. Preserved Steam Locomotives of Western Europe Volume Two Ian Allen Ltd., Shepperton, Surrey, UK, 1971. Octavo; hardcover, with silver-gilt spine-titling; 285pp., on lacquered stock, with many monochrome photographic illustrations. Spine extremities mildly softened; offset to endpapers; previous owner's ink inscription to the flyleaf; text block and page edges lightly toned. Price-clipped dustwrapper is sunned along the spine panel and edgeworn; some spotting to the verso; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $22

97832 Smiles, Samuel (Introduction by Eric de Mare) The Lives of George and Robert Stephenson - Folio Society edition The Folio Society, London, 1975. First printing. Octavo; hardcover, full cloth, with gilt spine titles and rules, an upper board decoration, and illustrated endpapers; 305pp., with a colour frontispiece, 7 plates likewise, and many monochrome woodcut illustrations. Very minor wear. Slipcase lightly rubbed. Near fine. George Stephenson did not invent the steam engine; that was due to Newcomen and later to James Watt. He did not invent the steam locomotive; that was due to a number of people including Cugnot, Trevithick and others. He did not invent the Railway; railways or tramways had been in use for two hundred years before Stephenson. The reason why Stephenson was known as "the father of the steam locomotive" was that he took a primitive, unreliable and wholly uneconomic device and, turning it into an efficient machine not very different to those which ran until fifty or so years ago, married it with the iron rail and alone, against considerable opposition, began, via the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and then the London and Birmingham Railway, the development of steam railways in England and the world. George Stephenson began life in 1781 in the worst and poorest of all circumstances, he did not learn to read until he was twenty years old, but he, together with his son Robert, became the foremost engineers in the railway world. If, in the middle years of the Nineteenth Century you wanted to build a railway, then, if you wanted it big bold and imaginative, you might go to Mr. Brunel; if you wanted it to pay, however, you would go to the Stephensons. Click here to order $32

63154 Stark, R. John The Return of Steam Locomotive C17, N0. 45 The Degener Timms Publications, Gympie Qld., 2000. Quarto hardcover, 120pp., with colour and monochrome plates. Near fine copy in like dustwrapper. For three years locomotive No. 45 sat on the Gympie Railway Workshops No.9 Outer Loop Line, then she was stripped of all brass and working parts and placed in a park for sixteen years. After her rescue and removal to the Gympie & District Historical Society Inc. it was considered 'nigh to impossible' to restore. The story shows how eight men over a period of five years and two days accomplished the impossible. Click here to order $35

212584 Thompson, John B. 38 The C38 Class Pacific Locomotives of the New South Wales Government Railways Eveleigh Press, Matraville, NSW, 2000. Reprint: quarto; hardcover, full green leather with silver-gilt spine-titling and upper board decoration and decorative endpapers; 276pp. with a full-colour frontispiece and many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; small tear on upper edge of dustwrapper, now repaired. Very good to near fine; wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. "Unemployment Clyde Engineering Company, away (sic.) back in 1938, and the Hunter Valley apprentices. forty-six years later, in 1984, had one problem in common - unemployment. In Clyde Engineering's case, Contract No. 12/38 for five 38 class locomotives was let to the company to 'relieve unemployment'. For expediency's sake, the NSW State Government simply gave the contract to Clyde Engineering without accurate costing and without calling for tenders. This action caused a considerable consternation for seven years until 2 March 1945, when 3805 was finally commissioned for service on NSWGR. Almost fifty years down the track, unemployed apprentices from the Hunter Valley Training Company restored the gallant 38 class leader, 3801, to its former glory, to steam again over NSW tracks. 3801 was the first steam locomotive to cross the Australian continent from Sydney to Perth and return. 3801 is the 4-6-2, Pacific type, which set a steam speed record (unbroken as yet) between Sydney and Newcastle, a distance of 104.5 miles in 2 hours and 1 minute. 3801 is the bullet-nosed streamliner, known Australia-wide, described as the finest example of locomotive engineering in this country." - from the Introduction. Click here to order $100

90376 Ward, Andrew (Rennie Ellis, illus.) Railway Stations of Australia Macmillan Company of Australia Pty. Ltd., Artarmon NSW, 1982. Quarto; hardcover, with decorated endpapers; 86pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; light softening to the spine extremities; random spotting to the preliminaries; previous owner's ink inscription to the verso of the flyleaf. Mild edgewear and spotting to the dustwrapper (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Very good. The fantastic and practical, the extravagant and economical, the classical and neo-Gothic, the grandiose and the purely functional are among the railway stations recorded here. In its day the refreshment stops were eagerly anticipated not only for want of sustenance offered but for the opportunity to punctuate the journey. There would be a rush to the refreshment counter, or a drink at the bar; one could walk up front to the locomotive, sweating steam from every joint and glinting with the recent application of oil on the running gear; feel the heat and listen to the beat of the compressor or catch a glimpse of the activity on the footplate. The romance of rail travel is with us yet though largely eclipsed by other forms of transport. Today the steam engine has been pensioned off, the branch line motors, the mixed trains and the roadside freights have mostly run their last trips in revenue service and the remaining passenger services corner a small share of the travel market. The picturesque backwaters of the system have been pruned and many stations reduced to the status of unattended halts. Weeds proliferate amongst the ruins where locomotives were watered and made ready for the road. The doors of countless goods-sheds are locked fast and pigeons roost where we once waited, not so long ago, for 'the pass'. The last surviving element of the transport scene are the stations in their erstwhile magnificence and comfort; their fading wallpapers and elegant fire surrounds, the waiting room appointments and the carved timber refreshment room bars. This book captures them all - from the resort stations, commuter stations, the big city terminals and the unimportant flag stops. Magnificent photography from Rennie Ellis. Click here to order $35

201893 Whitehouse, Patrick & David Jenkinson From BR to Beeching - Three Volumes The Routes of the Stars, Castles and Kings; Four Coupled Twilight; The Routes of the Thompson and Peppercorn Pacifics Atlantic Transport Publishers, Penryn, 1990. Three paperback, small quarto volumes; 60pp. in each and monochrome illustrations. Owner's name stamp. Mild spotting to upper text block edges; some scattered spotting to cover verso and first page of Vol. 1& 3 as well as creasing to front cover of Vol.3; mild wear to cover edges. Very good. Click here to order $35

207071 Wilson, Craig Built by Baldwin The Story of E.M. Baldwin & Sons, Castle Hill, New South Wales Light Railway Research Society of Australia, Melbourne Vic., 2002. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt upper board and spine titling and illustrated endpapers; 159pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear. Dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. The family engineering business of E.M.Baldwin & Sons would have seemed a most unlikely potential competitor to Australia's largest manufacturing companies - Clyde Engineering Co. Pty and Commonwealth Engineering (Queensland) - in 1962. Still reflecting its farming origins with large scale egg production, its small general engineering business specialised in custom designed stainless steel food preparation equipment. But in 1962 the firm was approached to build a small canefield locomotive and a year later commenced its pioneering work with flame-proofed rail vehicles. With frequent visits to potential and established customers to find what they needed, and a work environment that promoted flexibility, over time E.M. Baldwin & Sons became the most innovative and successful builder of diesel industrial railway equipment in Australia, best known for their introduction to the Australian sugar industry of the bogie canefield locomotive. The book tells the story of these engines as well as describing the Company's underground, shunting and fairground locomotives, brake wagons and diverse range of engineering work from stainless steel vessels to broad-acre agricultural tractors. Click here to order $75

211477 Wolmar, Christian Blood, Iron & Gold How the Railways Transformed the World Atlantic Books/Grove Atlantic Ltd., London, 2009. Reprint: octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 373pp., with maps and 20pp. of colour and monochrome plates. Minor wear. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed and edgeworn; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. The opening of the world's first railroad in Britain and America in 1830 marked the dawn of a new age. Within the course of a decade, tracks were being laid as far afield as Australia and Cuba, and by the outbreak of World War I, the United States alone boasted over a quarter of a million miles. With unrelenting determination, architectural innovation, and under gruesome labor conditions, a global railroad network was built that forever changed the way people lived. From Panama to Punjab, from Tasmania to Turin, Christian Wolmar shows how cultures were enriched, and destroyed, by one of the greatest global transport revolutions of our time, and celebrates the visionaries and laborers responsible for its creation. Click here to order $24

207571 Wright, Harry, K.T. Groves & M. Morahan (Phil Belbin & Craig Mackey, illus.) The 60 Class NSW Rail Transport Museum, Burwood NSW, 1994. Quarto; hardcover; 226pp., with many monochrome illustrations and a folding schematic. Minor wear; some light scraping to the boards. Dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. Click here to order $150