Locomotives: The Modern Diesel and Electric Reference.

Gordon Turner is the author of Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific’s
Greatest Ship and the editor of SeaFare, a quarterly newsletter on sea
travel.

This lavishly illustrated book describes the many types of diesel locomotives that entered service between the mid-1970s and mid-2000s on the railways of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. A few pages at the end deal with electric locomotives, but this is essentially a book about diesels.

To the untrained eye, the diesel locomotives that haul freight and passenger trains may look vaguely similar, but to the real aficionado there are important differences, some obvious, some subtle, that distinguish one model from the next, or even between varieties of the same model. These minutiae, well covered in Locomotives, will engage the attention of North America’s countless railfans. For each model, the author provides a specification list that includes production dates, numbers built, length, wheel arrangement, engine, horsepower, alternator, traction motors, and weight. He also supplies identification features such as “HiAd bolsterless trucks; GE steerable trucks optional,” and “Battery box covers bolted rather than hinged,” which convey little to the layman but much to the genuine enthusiast.

Each manufacturer has a separate chapter that describes the types of locomotives it has produced in the last 30 years, some built by the hundreds, a few as one-off examples. The text tells of the routes they have served and the degree of success they have achieved. Greg McDonnell, author of several rail-related books, writes with the knowledge gained by a lifetime’s study of diesel locomotives. He is also responsible for the great majority of the nearly 300 photographs that adorn the pages of the book. These marvellously eye-catching illustrations have been reproduced to a remarkably high standard; images are sharp, colours are true.

Locomotives may have a limited appeal to the general reader, although the photographs have an undeniable fascination, but for North America’s numerous railfans, this book is surely indispensable.