Early Railways

School Library Journal

Gr 9 UpTwo carefully researched and well-crafted volumes that give readers a lookalbeit from a British viewpointat the invention and early development of these machines. Cars covers roughly from the Nuremberg carriage built in Germany (1649) through the English Royce automobile (1904); Railways examines approximately the period from the Barnard Castle tram construction in England (1555) through the U.S. transcontinental, Union-Central Pacific Line, completed in 1869. In each book, Dale has tightly packed some 50 pages of formal, technical, and at times turgid, text with an almost unbelievable number of names, dates, quotes, and other germane information. This material is combined with numerous black-and-white reproductions of archival illustrations, patent drawings, maps, etc., along with somewhat lengthy captions. Both titles have a list of books for further reading that include works published as early as 1861 (Railways) and 1954 (Cars) and a short, incomplete index. All of these features help to create what could well be two very daunting books for American readers. Libraries should continue to rely upon Richard Wormser's The Iron Horse (Walker, 1993). For automobile history, students may find Nick Georgano's The American Automobile (Smithmark, 1993) more accessible.David A. Lindsey, Lakewood Junior/Senior High School, WA

From Barnes & Noble

This detailed survey from the Discoveries and Inventions series tells the story of the first railway systems in both Britain & the U.S., from car and track design to the intricacies of routing, timetabling, ticketing, railway promotion, more. B&W photos & illus.