Far Wheels. A Railroad Safari

by Charles S. Small

No one has told us so well as this how it feels to travel on the rail in far picturesque lands were the train - the steam train - is still the major factor in transport, and may be for many the sole daily (if not weekly) contact with the wider world. Who else has reported on the railway in Nossi Bé or that in the Mountains of the Moon?

Mr Small, an American oil man, wrote this book in Tokyo but duty and service have taken him over the world from Japan to Mozambique, Port Sudan to Peru, and everywhere he has sought out and ridden upon the local trains. In a manner informal but well-informed, he sketches the setting of these lines, and their sometimes farcical history.

Locomotive lists (and what an odd collection some of them are!) will make even the expert happy; and sketch maps too. But the most remarkable feature of the book is a surely unsurpassed collection of photographs, mostly of that rare kind that show not just the engine or even the train but the landscape and the spirit of the place.

This is, we should say, assured of a permanent place in world railway literature - but just as a highly unusual travel book it will be very much to many people's taste.

166 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1959