What do you think?
Rate this book
Treasury of Railroad Folklore: The Stories, Tall Tales, Traditions, Ballads and Songs of the American Railroad Man
Hardcover. No DJ. Ex-Library with usual markings. Text unmarked. Covers show edge wear with rubbing/scuffing and bumped corners. Spine edge tearing. Front hinge cracked but binding still intact. Heavily used but pages still quite legible/readable.
530 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1953
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 28, 2019
This was the weirdest best book I've read in eons. This entire book is a collection of random tales about the railroad. Many are well over 15o years old. The stories are bizarre, entertaining and surprising. I cannot recommend this book enough.
The book talks about things that happened in the seventies and you have to remember it means the 1970s. It goes into detail about what it means to say, "C U" as if no one would understand that translates to "see you."
The book is mesmerizing.
My favorite stories:
Turning 5 miles into 4. How to get rid of grasshoppers. Lincoln's time on the train. The pull chord was created to signal a stop. The sail vehicles. What happens when cows are on the track. Dogs on the track. The cat mascots. And even learning new things about how those who worked for the train didn't have to fight in the civil war! The stories are amazing.
I checked this book out from the library but might well just go buy it I really loved it that much.
The book talks about things that happened in the seventies and you have to remember it means the 1970s. It goes into detail about what it means to say, "C U" as if no one would understand that translates to "see you."
The book is mesmerizing.
My favorite stories:
Turning 5 miles into 4. How to get rid of grasshoppers. Lincoln's time on the train. The pull chord was created to signal a stop. The sail vehicles. What happens when cows are on the track. Dogs on the track. The cat mascots. And even learning new things about how those who worked for the train didn't have to fight in the civil war! The stories are amazing.
I checked this book out from the library but might well just go buy it I really loved it that much.
April 23, 2024
"I really think there must be some natural affinity between Yankee 'keep-moving' nature and a locomotive engine... Whatever the cause, it is certain that the 'humans' seem to treat the 'ingine,' as they call it, more like a familiar friend than the dangerous and desperate thing it really is."
Hundreds of short biographies, news articles, songs, stories, reactions, histories, and tales fill this brick of a volume. Organized by type and rarely longer than a couple pages, this is sort of like reading all the placards in an enormous museum, but without the artifacts or visuals to provide interest.
There is a lot of history here. The attributions of the writings range from the 1930s to the 1950s, but the events described go back as far as the 1830s.
If you have a deep and abiding love of trains and all related things, this may be worth wading into (although as a Little Free Library find I would tend to not expect it to be particularly available). For everyone else, knowing that an engineer named Jesus Garcia once saved the entire town of Nacozari at the cost of his own life by towing two cars of burning dynamite as far and as fast as he could before it exploded is probably the most important takeaway.
Hundreds of short biographies, news articles, songs, stories, reactions, histories, and tales fill this brick of a volume. Organized by type and rarely longer than a couple pages, this is sort of like reading all the placards in an enormous museum, but without the artifacts or visuals to provide interest.
There is a lot of history here. The attributions of the writings range from the 1930s to the 1950s, but the events described go back as far as the 1830s.
If you have a deep and abiding love of trains and all related things, this may be worth wading into (although as a Little Free Library find I would tend to not expect it to be particularly available). For everyone else, knowing that an engineer named Jesus Garcia once saved the entire town of Nacozari at the cost of his own life by towing two cars of burning dynamite as far and as fast as he could before it exploded is probably the most important takeaway.
March 22, 2013
Very interesting collection of stories.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews