Let's say I liked it much better by the time I got done with the book. For the first part, I was pretty disappointed and regretted purchasing it, but gradually warmed up to it. There is some interesting photography, and like I said by the end of the book I was happy to have it in my library, although that was not my first impression.

Cons:

1) What do those guys have against diesels? I would have longed for a few Black Widow or Tiger Stripes or the Narrow Gauge GE diesels, instead of repetitious photos over and over and over of the same steam locomotives.

2) That brigs us to #2. Often times the same photo is shown over and over from a slightly different angle. Basically the same photos repeated over and over. The one example off-hand (I'm at work without the book in front of me) is the sequence of the Cab Forward at Niles that is going be used as a helper with the two GP9s over Altamont Pass. There are like three photos of it taking water that are very close to identical photos. That occurs a lot in the book. You could have shown one photo of the same thing and then added some diesels or other variety.

3) When the same photo sequence is shown of one event, the captions don't mention that at all (with a few exceptions later in the book). So you show 12 photos of the same event of the Cab Forward deadheading to Niles and then assisting the two GP9s. Even though the date is the same each time, each caption is worded like it's introducing something totally new. (And here we have 4292 assisting.... on Nov. 12, 1956. This is 4292 assisting a train over Altamont on Nov. 12, 1956. This photo taken on Nov. 12, 1956.......). It would have been much more effective to tie the sequence together (this is another view of the same train shown in the previous photos a little father along at......). You see that a lot where it's obviously the same train and same date, but you wonder if the editors had any clue of that or were just randomly writing the caption in a vacuum.

4) There were a few editing and factual errors, but not really bad if I recall. Fewer errors than in the Morning Sun GN in Color book which I otherwise think is outstanding and MS's best book, for example.

Well, you asked........