A Passion for Steam book, second edition

A Passion for Steam (2nd edition)
by Marc Horovitz
Cal-Pac Trading Company
33268 Central Ave.
Union City CA 94587
8¾” x 11″, 240 pages, color, hardbound with dust jacket
Price: $45
Website: www.accucraft.com

If ever there was an appropriately titled book, it has to be this one. The first time I met Marc Horovitz, in the early 1980s, he visited our garden railway in Maryland, bringing with him a small steam-powered tram engine he had built. It was my introduction to the world of live steam. That was fairly early in Marc’s journey (Garden Railways was just getting started) and it was easy to see that there was something about these fire-breathing mechanical contraptions that captured his imagination in a rare but deep way.

A Passion for Steam reflects this connection well. The first chapter tells the story of Marc’s journey; his early influences, and how he came to be bitten—and bitten hard—by the live-steam bug. He tells of how live steam pretty much directed his life since that time; importing early live-steam locomotives, starting Garden Railways magazine, building three railroads, and amassing a collection of live-steam locomotives from around the world of pretty much every era and genre.

This is the second edition of this book (the first was published in 2008), and has an additional 32 pages and 18 engines in the gallery of live-steam locomotives that makes up the back half of the book. While the book has 12 chapters, it’s really two halves. The first half (chapters 1-11) cover live-steam locomotives in general, the different types, how they work, boilers, cylinders, fittings, and other technical aspects of live-steam locomotives. These concepts are illustrated by easy-to-understand drawings and photos of locomotives from Marc’s collection. Marc combines those drawings and photos with text that is also easy to understand, while still being technical enough to teach a novice reading the book how steam locomotives—and the parts and pieces on them—work, as well as why they work. Someone reading this book could easily look at a live-steam locomotive and be able to understand what they’re seeing: how it’s fired, how the cylinders work, and identify what fittings are what and why they’re there. Aided by Marc’s extensive collection of even some pretty esoteric locomotives, you’d be hard-pressed to find a style of locomotive not explained in this book (even including Chip Rosenbloom’s whimsical creations!).

The second half of the book (chapter 12) contains much of the collection of live-steam locomotives that Marc has amassed over the years. These pages are an outgrowth of Marc’s “Locomotive of the Month” feature that used to run on his website. There are (if I counted correctly) 101 locomotives covered in this section, each covering one or two pages. The descriptions talk about the history of the prototypes or inspiration for the model (if there was one), the history of the model itself, features that might make it unique in the live-steam world, and a few comments on how the locomotive steams. Each loco is shown in a classic “three-quarters” view, with additional photos showing unique features or other interesting details.

The locomotives are arranged chronologically, the oldest locomotives first. It’s fascinating in its own right to look at the engines and see how certain things changed over the years while others remained the same. (We are, after all, talking about a technology that’s nearly 200 years old.) I enjoyed seeing models that I remember from my early days in the hobby and learning their history.

All in all, this book is a good combination of enjoyable text, great photos and illustrations, and an author who clearly knows and loves his subject matter. If you’re one who may be even remotely fascinated by these little fire-breathing dragons, this book is a great addition to the library. Fair warning, though—you’ll want to make sure to save shelf space for the steamers you’ll be inspired to have a go with.