Railscapes: A Northern Pacific Brasspounder's Album

Packed with spectacular photographs and a trainman's vivid memories, Railscapes is an exceptional album, filled with the author's unbounded enthusiasm, love, and respect for the whole world of trains. Once again, Jim Fredrickson opens the shutter wide on more than six decades of American railroading, and offers insider's insights on the business of moving men and materials via the great steel ribbons that connected the Pacific Northwest with the rest of the world.

For 38 years, the author worked for the Northern Pacific in Washington state as a telegraph operator--a "brasspounder"--and as a dispatcher. He had the good fortune to work and travel in some of the most beautiful territory in the United States, and his camera covered it all--from the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and Idaho, to the Cascade Range of Washington, to the coastal region of Puget Sound.

Wherever he's been, since his teens, Fredrickson has been ready to capture by a click both ordinary workhorse trains as well as any special, magnificent, vintage, or futuristic trains he could get near. Arranged thematically from his immense collection of railroad images, Railscapes features more of his favorite photographs, with sections on train wrecks, special and futuristic trains, the last of the steam engines, depots, railroad folks, and more.