* A Treasury of Railroad Folklore * - Railroad folklore book
Posted: 24 Apr 2007, 07:01
I've just got hold of a superb book - "A Treasury of Railroad Folklore" edited by B A Botkin and Alvin F Harlow. The sub-title sums it up: "The stories, tall tales, traditions, ballads and songs of the American railroad". After I've had time to delve into its 500+ pages a bit I'll write more.
US railroads are not my primary interest, but I was trying to track down a piece of US railroad slang and I posted a query on a discussion board, http://www.railroad.net (which seems to be a very good well-moderated site which uses the same format as ours - have a look at it and see what our forum could become!), and got several useful replies (including one from a bloke inviting me to fire his steam loco next time I'm in the USA). They eventually led me to this out of print book, which I ordered via Amazon. It came surface mail from UK - took two months.
US railroads are not my primary interest, but I was trying to track down a piece of US railroad slang and I posted a query on a discussion board, http://www.railroad.net (which seems to be a very good well-moderated site which uses the same format as ours - have a look at it and see what our forum could become!), and got several useful replies (including one from a bloke inviting me to fire his steam loco next time I'm in the USA). They eventually led me to this out of print book, which I ordered via Amazon. It came surface mail from UK - took two months.