Oil Can Wrote:

> Since we're on the subject of books, who has the
> new one that the SPH&TS recently released on the
> SP in NorCal and Oregon? I thumbed through a copy
> at the local train shop and really liked the
> content but the colors in all the photos seemed
> rather flat. Anyone else notice this?

Ordered mine directly from SPH&TS and am very disappointed. All the colors are washed out on my copy also. The photo collection isn't that impressive to me - seems too ordinary and too many of 4449. I picked up the SP Painting and Lettering Guide earlier from SPH&TS. Color and printing is good quality, but content is sparse - limited lettering diagrams reproduced too small and no common standard lettering diagrams. The history of the transitional paint schemes has far too many holes in it such as all tiger stripe being used before aluminum ends added, and partial repaints of solid orange over the tiger stripes (not true Halloween!) and even repainting just the red on bloody nose.

If I had been able to thumb through either book first, I doubt I would have bought them. In my opinion neither was up to SPH&TS previous standards of photo reproduction and content.