Both are finished and in stock. Both are all steam and full of good information, especially that Lima.

The Lima original was a total mess, a bunch of blueprint pages that had bled together as old blueprints and carbon copies do. I had our printer reverse them and clean them up as best we could, but some of them are still hard to read and some were just not salvageable. I pulled out the dead pages and have printed the rest of them.

The Lima stuff is packed with SHAY information for you all who are into them. The ALCO has a fantastic late-steam section on welded locomotive boilers and actual walschaert valve gear lap, lead, and travel numbers based on the cylinder bore and stroke and the service the locomotive was built for. Really great stuff.

I have a couple more books that I want to get out shortly, a late steam AT&SF Enginemen's handbook and a great collection of locomotive boiler layout, construction, and repair information from the late steam era. Bill Petitjean's new book about the demise of steam is due out in a few weeks as well.

My partner's wife was seriously injured in a car accident about a month or so ago and he has had about all he can handle staying with her as she is in tough shape. That has impacted us quite a bit as Joan and I both have real world jobs and Harry handled a lot of the LRLC workload, so if we are slow, I am sorry but that is what we are!

If you are in the preservation business and need the Baldwin, Alco, or Lima standards in your work, please email me or call me. I want you people to have them to use.

The new books are up on the site right now.
Ken Riddle



Steam tech books
ken290@hiwaay.net