A Century Plus Ten of D&RGW Narrow Gauge Freight Cars book

A Century + Ten of D&RGW Narrow Gauge Freight Cars, 1871 to 1981
2nd edition, revised and enlarged
by Robert E. Sloan
Published by BHI Publications
PO Box 247
Cottleville OH 63338
Spiral bound, hundreds of b&w photos, 360 pages
Price: $49.99
Web site: www.bhipubs.com

In 2000, Bob Sloan published a ground-breaking work on the freight equipment of American’s best known, narrow-gauge railroad, the Denver & Rio Grande Western. That first edition of A Century + Ten was hailed as the definitive reference on the topic, and rightly so. Nothing written before had come close to the breadth and depth of it.

But with a topic so vast, there is always more to learn, and always some oversights that must be corrected. So, Dr. Sloan has published a second edition of his book, this time with some 60 additional pages of information and many corrections. The additional material in the second edition is great stuff, a worthy addition to an indispensable book. I will not review the second edition as a whole, concentrating rather on what is new in this edition. I will just say that if you want to know something about a D&RGW freight car, it’s in here.

After the first edition appeared, many other rail historians and modelers were able to fill in some missing details in Sloan’s text. Much of that material has been incorporated into the second edition.

My copy of the first edition is well marked up with annotations but, in looking it over for comparison to the second edition, I noted that most of these were my corrections to incorrect photograph and figure references in the text. I am pleased to report that the second edition corrects all of those problems.

Another sometimes-annoying feature of the first edition was the inconsistent reproduction of photographs and historic drawings. These are often the most important features of a book from a modeler’s point of view. I was delighted to see that the darkness, contrast, and halftone patterns had been expertly adjusted to get the most out of all of them in the second edition.

Additionally, the second edition has numerous photographs (some historic, some of preserved equipment) and plans not found in the first. In particular, Sloan’s coverage of the cabooses makes a modeler’s mouth water. This edition adds dozens of interior photographs and plans for the cabooses. Similarly, the little-modeled coke-rack gondolas are well documented here. Every class of car is represented with multiple plans and photos, so you could probably spend the rest of your life building models from this book

For those who like to run realistic operations on their model railroads, the car rosters should be very useful, and especially the graphs showing the numbers of cars in each class over time. In those charts and graphs, you can see the history of the whole narrow-gauge movement rise and fall!

If you model Colorado narrow gauge, this is highly recommended as an encyclopedia of plans and deep historical background, not only about this railroad, but representative of narrow-gauge railways all over the country.