I'm looking for guidance on where I can find copies or otherwise of various standard practice texts, and preferrably latter steam era. I've searched eBay several different times but haven't had any luck.

What kind of availability am I going to find, and what prices should I expect? Locomotive cyclopedias are fairly easy to find, although not in the choicest years and/or inexpensive. Also, do you have a personal preferance that you would recommend to others or other advice on what to avoid?

Thanks in advance.

John- I have a list of books, technical papers, and other info on my webpage at:

http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/libra.html

The emphasis is on "improved" steam locomotives, but there are a lot of basic steam references as well. This page may give you some more ideas of books to look for.

One thing that I'd forgotten about is the International Correspondence School (ICS) booklets on steam locomotives and other railway subjects. I have a complete list at the link above. You can occasionally find them on ebay or in a college library. A good many of these booklets (mostly steam-related) are available on CD from this outfit (no affiliation, etc.):

http://www.maxcowonline.com/maxspage/pr ... =184&y=349

http://www.rpca.com/resourcelibrary.htm

Regards,

Steve

Guess I just found a new link to add to my page.

There is an excellent amount of information to be found in the 7th edition of American Machinist in the Railroad Shop data chapter. The main thing I use all the time is the page of wear limits and allowable fits for the machinery. These allowances are less than what the FRA allows, but was the standard for determining if the parts was usable 'as is' or needed rebuilding. Other editions have other information on cylinder and valve fits and clearances. These books are available on Google, or Amazon etc.

Another more comprensive source is that available from "Train/ARM' which reprinted a number of standards and have them left over for sale.

Then too, The Baldwin Standards were reprinted by Little Engines and there are enough copies out there that someone would be willing to share. Most of the rebuilders I have been working with use this as the bible.

Then too, check out Linsey Publications, for they have reprinted many usefull books on locomotive repair and rebuilding and they are still in print.

Last but not least, is to google up the copies of Railway and Locomotive Engineering by Angus Sinclair. I just bought a CD with all the issues from 1901-1929 from [url][url]http://www.thehistoricalarchive.com[/url]

Then too, try to get copies of Railroad Mechanical Engineer which was THE publication for all things railroad. The Locomotive Cyclopedias have articals and references to articals appearing in the RME.
If you have any needs specificaly, please contact me.

Dave Wantz

Can't help you with late steam era material, but if you want pre-1930 stuff:
http://www.archive.org/
http://books.google.com/
You would be literally stunned at the HUGE mount of material that's online these days. It takes a while to search and to download, but it's well worth the effort, and you'll end up with FAR more material than if you started buying copies of books here and there.

Over the past year or so I've downloaded well over 1000 texts from these two resources. Such interesting finds include nine Car Builder's Cyclopedias, 32 ORERs, 10 Official Guides, eight Baldwin Catalogs, Two Alco catalogs, 10 AREA annual reports, 10 MCBA standards books, treatises on air brake and stoker maintenance, and various rules exams. Semi-related items would include a huge amount of anti-trust material from the 1920s, mostly revolving around the meat-packing industry.

Yeah, Hugh, some of us live there ...

old Topic about the ICS titles;
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11995&hilit=ICS

Just search; ICS on this forum and you'll find all the info.

Maxcow has 14 of them on CD/DVD.

As an aside, the 1947 edition of the Locomotive Cyclopeida was the last edition to cover steam extensively. The 1956 Locomotive Cyclopeida was the last edition where it was published as a stand-alone book, before being combined into the Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia in 1960. By the 1956 edition, steam was relegated to a few pages in the back. IN the 1960 edition, there was no steam. In the most recent edition of the Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia, published in 1997, steam made a return, with interesting photos and information useful to the modern day steam operator.

Various editions of the Locomotive Cyclopedia and the Car Builders' Cyclopeida have been reprinted over the years. eBay or the used book services at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as other online sources are good for ferreting them out. If you shop around, some can be had at reasonable prices. Let me give you a breakdown of what I know.

Newton K. Gregg Reprints:

Publisher Newton K. Gregg reprinted various editions of the Locomotive Dictionary, Car Builders' Dicitonary[/i] (both predacessors to the respective cyclopedias), as well as the Locomotive Cyclopedia[/i].

He reprinted at least one 19th century version of the Car Builders Dictionary, as well as the 1906 edition.

He has reprinted the 1906 Locomotive Dictionary, and the 1925 and 1930 Locomotive Cyclopedias.

Kalmbach:

Kalmbach reprinted the 1941 Locomotive Cyclopedia in 1971. Kalmbach also reprinted the 1940 Car Builders' Cyclopedia in 1973. Both are readily avaiable.

Others:
A company titled Periscope Productions LLC, which sells a lot of military videos, also has reprinted the 1906 Locomtoive Dictionary, as well as a bunch of Baldwin catalogs, and other titles of interest for the steam and traction enthusiast. Their website is here:http://www.periscopefilm.com/. Their books are softcover, but the 1906 Locomotive Dictionary[/i] I recently picked up isn't a bad reproduction.

Dover reprinted the 1873 Car Builders' Dictionary in the 1970s. Prices on these are fairly reasonable, and can be found in multiple sources.

1922 is the "newest" year of a Cyclopedia that has run out of copyright. As such, they are available from multiple sources on DVD-ROM.

With the exception of the 1906 Locmotive Dictionary from Pericsope, most of the Cyclopedia reprints are going to run you around $100.00 or so. That's not bad, considering the Kalmbach reprint of the 1941 Locomotive Cyclopedia cost $40.00 in 1970, equal to about $215 today, due to inflation.

If you look on eBay, Amazon or Barnes and Noble, it appears that some people are re-printing these books and others, by printing the electronic verisions mentioned by posters above. Usually the description isn't good enough to be able to tell which year it is. I've been intrigued, but wary about purchasing them, even at the mid $30 price.

David- thanks much for posting the additional data on Locomotive Cyclopedias.

The 1947 must be very rare; I've seen one on ebay since I've been looking (periodically over the last 10 years) and it had a STARTING bid of over $400 (it was some really odd amount like $436.52). I even e-mailed the seller to ask him if that was a typo and got a fairly terse reply in return that that WAS the correct amount and was a fair price for the volume.

Maybe someone will get around to reprinting it one of these days.

Hugh,

Bibliophilia is an expensive disease.

As for the price of the 1947, you just have to shop around, though I don't see the 1947 often.

The Kalmbach reprints are real beauties, with the color ads and everything. The qaulity of the bindings is great, and proably very very close to the original.

I noticed that the 1925 and 1930 Cyclopedias reprinted by Newton Gregg were printed in China, probably to save on printing costs.

I just wonder if in this day and age, if such a project to reprint, say the 1947 Locomotive Cyclopedia would be feasable, especially considering the digitally scanned or "print on demand" options.

Still, for an interested party, I wonder if Simmons-Boardman would let one reprint the 1947 edition.

From a historical perspective, I find the 1930 Locomotive Cyclopedia to be of interest. The steam section has information on Super Power and technologically, the steam locomotive is just about to reach its peak in North America. Lurking toward the rear in the "motor locomotives" section is the Ingersoll Rand boxcab. Even with steam was nearly at its peak, the future was there, whether people wanted to see it or not.

I assume we're here to talk about getting manuals to people doing restorations and operations, rather than steamfap. /Seinfeld/ Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Everything about the book business was run by the reality of printing, warehousing, shipping and retailing wood pulp. These massive costs were so woven into the book business that they have no idea what to do now that the paper tiger is gone. Hence, the madness in publishing right now. The natural economics suggest a market where you pay $X for the author's words, and $Y for the delivery format. Right now, authors are subsidizing paper. One self-publishing novelist sells a paper book for $7+shipping and nets $1.20. Digital format is $3.99 and they net $2.80. Gee, which one is better?

The other deal-changer is the longevity of books. Do a print run on a paper book, and it's burning warehouse and bookstore space... get your sales and get out, to make room for other titles. In the new paradigm, it costs nothing to keep a book in the catalog forever. You have longer to recoup costs. Costs are lower and there's far less gambling. That means it is commercially viable forever, assuming you are willing to do the upfront work of writing it.

Or in the case of a reprint, reformatting it. That cost is not zero!

Now, on to the alternative: You may be able to copy it. Anything prior to 1923 has expired copyright, copy away. Post-1923, copying is permitted under a legal term called Fair Use. That uses four tests, all looked at together (no one is a deal-breaker.)

#1. Does your copying deprive the copyright owner of a commercial market? That is unlikely to be an issue except for books where the work itself has significant foamer appeal, like those cyclopedias. That is why I went into detail about the sea-changes in publishing. Don't tell me that a 6-ET service manual has a commercial market. Would you pay $4 for it on Kindle?

Ignore prices in the antequarian/collector book market. Those reflect the value of the format (1st edition etc.) not the value of the information therein.

#2. Are you commercial -- or are you educational or nonprofit? That is to say, what is the nature of your reuse of the material? Selling it to foamers is a different act than giving it to restoration staff.

#3. What is the nature of the material? These sorts of things work in your favor: It was a service booklet. The manufacturer made its profit on the gadget not the booklet. The booklet was given away free to buyers of the gadget. The book is about a gadget that is utterly obsolete. The gadget in question is outlawed from commercial use today. The manufacturer is now defunct. The publisher is now defunct. The original is a "historic artifact" locked away in a museum archive, and totally not suitable for getting greasy fingerprints on. The copying enables some unforeseen, useful use for the document not possible at time of publication. The material is remixed and improved, e.g. static drawings made interactive.

#4. How much of the book did you copy? Even if the answer is "all", being strong in the other factors may allow fair use.

A bellwether example is Google Books. They scanned and OCR'ed the full-text of every book in about a dozen libraries, to allow full-text searching. They don't share the book but they do share snippets. All that is fair use.

Another factor is their interest and defense of the data. BBD's protection on the Pullman data is active and assertive, so it'd be a different matter than copying docs of a 40-year-defunct company.

Common sense and case law apply. Have common sense. Check case law.

Steamfap? I think I should be insulted. ;-)