Hello Folks,

As we all know I.C.S. issued many books about various railroad and engineering topics. Is there a definitive index for these books? As far as I can tell there seems to be no rhyme or reason to their book numbering scheme.

I've searched with the google, and searched this site as well, but haven't found anything. Perhaps I'm using the wrong search terms.

Thanks for any help,
Joe

I have a listing on my page; I believe it to be comprehensive:

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

What I found when acquiring a number of volumes quite a few years ago is that the ICS books were available as separate paper bound lessons and could also be obtained as a bound book that covered a subject and included all the relevant lessons. Their offerings were much wider than just engineering topics.

The ICS Reference Library was a set of volumes with a large number of subjects. I believe libraries were the target audience. The only one I have is volume 42 which covers 11 subjects in mechanics, steam engines, and steam turbines.

From about 1894 until about 1900, the publisher was Colliery Engineer Company, also of Scranton. The ICS Reference Library volume I have includes lessons copyrighted by both ICS and Colliery.

It appears that ICS Reference Library volumes would vary in content over the years, i.e., volume 30 one year might not have the same content as volume 30 in another. I got caught on this when I was able to look at a volume that had material I wanted, found one of the same number for sale, and then found that it had different contents.

When I was acquiring them, I searched on Ebay and used book sites for "ICS", "International Correspondence School." and "Colliery Engineer Company." From those searches I could check titles to see if anything interested me.

In 1979, Bill Fitt of Live Steam Magazine published "The Steam Locomotive Study Course." It was a four volume set of reprints of ICS steam locomotive lessons.

Hugh, and Dick:

Thank you so much. This is exactly what I was looking for. Interesting that the contents of each individual book number could and did change over time.

I'm an avid book collector, and at some point, I would love to track down as many as I can, but in the interim Hugh's list and the thing that you mentioned, Dick, about the 1979 4 volume collection seem incredibly interesting.

Thanks again, folks. Appreciate it!

Joe
Centreville, MD

Try
(DELETED, BOGUS LINK) for a large list of railroad and other books., in several different formats, plus some history.

(See a more-recent post with a corrected link which has valid, historic information!)

The link above points to the last valid site on 'web.archive.org', so far as I can tell, before "someone else" has taken over the web site.

- Bob Milhaupt

Bob M.---

I don't think that link works very well; I'm directed to a gambling/gaming page, in a foreign language.

Howard P.

I had some luck with this link;

https://web.archive.org/web/20200513102 ... -ics-r.htm

Joe

OOPS! I meant try a link such as at https://web.archive.org/web/20200514003449/http://www.icsarchive.org/. (A valid, right link!)

I unfortunately "copied" the wrong link - the one which had the current bad web site, when I thought I had a "Wayback" link...

- Bob Milhaupt

A similar set of texts is "Modern Engineering Practice" published by American School of Correspondence & Armor Institute of Technology around 1900. I have nine of ten volumes and one covers railroads and locomotives in a format similar to ICS. Other volumes include a wide range of engineering topics with volumes for math and mechanical drawing.

Many I.C.S. courses were also sold as hard bound books under the imprint of” The International Library of Technology.” These were the same courses sold as I.C.S. lessons.

I found a complete set of the I.L. of T books covering rail topics.
So if you are looking for these books try searching for The International Library of Technology books.

Keith

I have a few of the smaller ICS books with the Q&A sheet still inside!

It was, as the name suggests, a correspondence school. Customers paid to have a series of workbooks shipped to them. As they studied each chapter, there was a question sheet. The student was to fill in his answers and mail them back to Scranton, where the "professor" would grade them. Presumably after completing a curriculum, the student received some sort of "degree" or certificate of completion.

These booklets, and the bound compendia which were intended as more of a reference book than a correspondence course, are valuable technical references. One problem with internet versions is they tend to be scanned poorly for reproducing photos and drawings.

Hello Everyone,

Thank you again for all the information and leads! Very appreciative.


Keith,

Thank you for the tip on "The International Library of Technology." Perhaps, since these are lesser known, they might be more findable... if that's a word. :)

v/r,
Joe

People tend to favor collecting the hardbound blue books, but the staple bound workbooks are much more convenient for flat scanning images.

PC

It seems like we all posted on here somewhere a few years ago, a 200+ item list of the ICS steam locomotive titles. I have most of those titles stored, waiting for the day we need really them again.

Here it is:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11995&p=210780&hilit=+ICS#p210780