I drove by 3029 Prospect Ave. today when I was in Cleveland. No syphons were to be found.

Hello,

Interesting dialogue in this thread.

To summarize all the input provided here, its appears SB published this book approximately every three years, maybe this is obvious, based on this thread and other searches, the chronology around and after the war years appears to be...

1941 - 11th Edition
1944 - 12th Edition
1947 - 13th Edition
1950-1952 - 14th Edition
1956 - 15th Edition

Looking in my archives I appear to have an original 1941. Similar to Joe who started this thread, I was curious on when the most modern steam power content would have been included and when it was illustrated. It makes sense that 1947 would be the ‘sweet spot’ for that data. Possibly 1944 could be a close second but the war (and its restrictions) may have had an influence on the content, possibly not covering all the advances. Lesser content in 1950 also makes sense because steam was already in rapid decline in the US.

As a side note, of the advances in steam locomotive and all its features culminating in the war years, then with the N&W building the J 611 in 1950 and Henschel & North British Building the SAR Class 25's in large numbers in 1953, both series had a curious feature....spoked drivers. If any locomotives deserved Boxpok drivers, it was these two series of builds. Yet when you investigate deeper into both, both designs had reinforced spoke wheels....especially the 611, after a close up look at the 611 at Strasburg, the main driver had some interesting web reinforcements you cannot pick up at distance.

Thank you

Randy Musselman

Our J&L 58 was fortunate enough to be featured in the 1941 Cyc. Page 1028.

I'm above my pay grade here, but I am going to guess: problems with boiler sediments.

Why would you think that water would flow downward in the hottest part of the boiler?

Is 1956 the last year before it was combined with the Car Builders' Cyclopedia?

I need to dig mine out, but I think the 1956 edition has a small steam section, but refers readers to the 1947 edition for the most complete coverage of steam.

Loco Cycs:
22, 25, 27, 30, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50/52, 56 (last Loco Cyc).

Car Builders Cycs:
25, 28, 31, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49, 53, 57, 61 (last Car Builders Cyc).

Next one was 1970, combined volume; then 1980, 1984.

Howard P.

I picked up a copy of a volume entitled "Popular Picture & Plan Book of Railroad Cars and Locomotives", dated 1951, here in the UK many years ago.
It was published by the same firm (Simmons-Boardman) as the Cyclopedias but was aimed at modellers.

Was this a one-off publication, or did they produce others in later years?

To add a little more to Howard's post here are the rest of the editions:

Loco Dictionary
1909, 1912, 1916, 1919

Car Builder's Dictionary
1879, 1884, 1895, 1903, 1906, 1909, 1912, 1916, 1919, 1922

Car and Loco Cyclopedia
1966, 1970, 1974, 1980, 1984, 1997

There was also a combined edition published in 1974; mine is marked "Centennial Edition."

The 1997 Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia is an interesting book. The publisher obviously was aware the book format had outlived its usefulness, since they hadn't published an update since '84, and the editorial sections go very heavily into the history of development of the subject matter, including steam locomotives, presented under the guise of documenting the resurgence of locos restored for excursion service. Kind of like it was intended to close the curtain on the series, which it did. It's an interesting read, but I'm not sure it's worth the money the publisher wants for it.

The publisher occasionally puts them on sale. I bought mine at deep discount from them about 8 or so years ago.

They also sold the version of the 1997 edition as a loose-leaf set, designed to be placed in a binder. At inception, they apparently thought they might issue updates to specific sections, rather than the entire book. That was apparently optimistic.

Great info, folks! Thanks very much. (still on the lookout for an affordable '47 issue...) ;)

My advice is to keep watching eBay. They show up, and you won't have to pay a lot either.