Finding the best railroad signal book suitable for your needs isnt easy. With hundreds of choices can distract you. Knowing whats bad and whats good can be something of a minefield. In this article, weve done the hard work for you.
Reviews
1. Classic Railroad Signals: Semaphores, Searchlights, and Towers
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Voyageur Press MNDescription
Explore the history, quirks, and stories behind signals with gorgeous period and contemporary photography.
Railroad signals are the link between the steam era and modern railroading. Designed for reliability and durability, signals can survive for decades. In fact, old semaphores installed during the early years of the twentieth century were still in service during the 1990s, protecting trains that were running with the latest modern diesels. Even searchlight-style signals that were the epitome of 1940s railroading continue to work today.
Though standards were introduced in the early twentieth century, interpretation varied greatly among railroads, so even major railroads have individualized signals. Some, such as the Pennsylvania Railroad, were noted for their distinctive signaling hardware. Others lines became known for their peculiarities in practice.
Classic Railroad Signals examines how different railroads developed specific hardware to serve their unique needs, in the process tracing the lineage of various types of hardware and highlighting how and where they were used. From nineteenth-century mechanical signals to disc signals, upper- and lower-quadrant semaphores, three-light electric signals, searchlight-style targets, positional lights, and color-position light hardware, author Brian Solomon covers nearly every conceivable piece of North American signaling hardware, even the virtually extinct wig wag that was once standard in California and Wisconsin.
Gorgeous period and contemporary photography shows signals and trains from around North America. Classic Railroad Signals should be next to Railroad Signaling on every railroad fan's bookshelf.
2. Dark Signal: A Kate Fox Novel (A Kate Fox Mystery)
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Dark SignalDescription
Dark Signal by Shannon Baker is the second installment in the Kate Fox mystery series, called "A must read" by New York Times bestselling author Alex Kava, starring a female Longmire in the atmospheric Nebraska Sandhills.
Reeling from her recent divorce, Kate Fox has just been sworn in as Grand County, Nebraska Sheriff when tragedy strikes. A railroad accident has left engineer Chad Mills dead, his conductor Bobby Jenkins in shock. Kate soon realizes that the accident was likely murder.
Who would want to kill Chad Mills? Kate finds that he made a few enemies as president of the railroad workers union. Meanwhile his widow is behaving oddly. And why was his neighbor Josh Stevens at the Mills house on the night of the accident?
While her loud and meddling family conspires to help Kate past her divorce, State Patrol Officer Trey closes in on Josh Stevens as the suspect. Kate doesnt believe it. She may not have the experience, but shes lived in the Sandhills her whole life, and knows the land and the people. Something doesnt add upand Kate must find the real killer before he can strike again.
3. The Woman on the Orient Express
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The Woman on the Orient ExpressDescription
Hoping to make a clean break from a fractured marriage, Agatha Christie boards the Orient Express in disguise. But unlike her famous detective Hercule Poirot, she cant neatly unravel the mysteries she encounters on this fateful journey.
Agatha isnt the only passenger on board with secrets. Her cabinmate Katharine Keelings first marriage ended in tragedy, propelling her toward a second relationship mired in deceit. Nancy Nelsonnewly married but carrying another mans childis desperate to conceal the pregnancy and teeters on the brink of utter despair. Each woman hides her past from the others, ferociously guarding her secrets. But as the train bound for the Middle East speeds down the track, the parallel courses of their lives shift to intersectwith lasting repercussions.
Filled with evocative imagery, suspense, and emotional complexity, The Woman on the Orient Express explores the bonds of sisterhood forged by shared pain and the power of secrets.
4. Famous Trains (Dover History Coloring Book)
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Add color to bring these train drawings to lifeDescription
Thirty drawings depict the interiors and exteriors of such famous trains as the multicolored cars of the Hiawatha, a passenger line traveling between Chicago and Seattle; the observation lounge on the Burlington Zephyr; and a sleeping compartment on New York Central's famed 20th Century Limited.
5. Signal for Vengeance (The Railway Detective Series)
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Signal for Vengeance Railway Detective 13Description
1860, Wimborne, Dorset. Rebecca Tullidge, miserably married to her callous husband, finds some escape through a love affair with another man. After putting her drunk husband to bed one Saturday night, she sneaks from their lodge to meet railway officer, John Bedloe. But much to her horror, she trips over her lover's corpse on the railway tracks.The railway director calls Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming in from London to solve the hideous crime. As the pair arrives in the countryside, they find there is no shortage of difficult personalities and conflicting alibis, making the mystery much harder to unravel.
On discovering Bedloe had plenty of enemies as well as a sordid past, Colbeck and Leeming must unearth which of them is capable of plotting a violent murder. Could it possibly be a woman, distraught that he'd taken another lover? Or a jealous husband who detected an affair? With pressure mounting from all sides, the Railway Detective is tasked with uncovering the truth.
6. German Railroad Guns in Action - Armor No. 15
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Reference BookDescription
Armor #157. On the Blue Comet
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Great product!Description
Trains and time travel spur one boys thrilling adventure as he seeks to rejoin his father in a new classic from Rosemary Wells and Bagram Ibatoulline. (Age 10 and up)One day in a house at the end of Lucifer Street, on the Mississippi River side of Cairo, Illinois, eleven-year-old Oscar Ogilvies life is changed forever. The Crash of 1929 has rippled across the country, and Oscars dad must sell their homewith all their cherished model trainsand head west in search of work. Forced to move in with his humorless aunt, Carmen and his teasing cousin, Willa Sue, Oscar is lonely and miserableuntil he meets a mysterious drifter and witnesses a crime so stunning it catapults Oscar on an incredible train journey from coast to coast, from one decade to another. Filled with suspense and peppered with witty encounters with Hollywood stars and other bigwigs of history, this captivating novel by Rosemary Wells, gorgeously illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline, resonates with warmth, humor, and the true magic of a timeless adventure.
8. Arduino Model Railroad Signals: And Other Projects
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Arduino Model Railroad Signals And Other ProjectsDescription
This book provides ideas for the model railroad enthusiast to develop automated signal projects. Most of these projects are HO scale, however there is one G scale semaphore signal. It also provides the basics on using and programming the Arduino micro-controller. These projects are great starting points for projects that specifically fit the model railroaders own system.9. Train: Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World--from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief
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Train Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World From the Trans Siberian to the Southwest ChiefDescription
An epic and revelatory narrative of the most important transportation technology of the modern worldIn his wide-ranging and entertaining new book, Tom Zoellnercoauthor of the New York Timesbestselling An Ordinary Mantravels the globe to tell the story of the sociological and economic impact of the railway technology that transformed the worldand could very well change it again. From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the Japanese-style bullet trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of this most indispensable form of travel. A masterful narrative history, Train also explores the sleek elegance of railroads and their hypnotizing rhythms, and explains how locomotives became living symbols of sex, death, power, and romance.
