Maybrook Book/Railroad Research

I got the word from Purple Mountain Press that Marc Newman's book about the Maybrook Yard is back from the printer and being distributed.

Bernie Rudberg

Count me in for a copy! If I had a time machine for only one day, I would go to Maybrook. Circa '55 anyone?

i agree... id love to have been on the maybrook line on the old bridge over the hudson to the maybrook yard.

Thanks for the info.

Can it be obtained local or is it mail order only??

Not top get off topic but............... Mr. Rudberg how are things goiing on your (hope I have this correct) "Boston, New York and Montreal" book??

I am very eager to see the results of this.

thanks again JB

Work on the book has been delayed by a death in the family but we are making progress again. Last month we spent a session at the archives at UCONN. It is slow work but we will get there eventually.

Bernie Rudberg

I received my book Friday March 2nd along with the Poukeepsie Bridge book
"Bridging The Hudson" and both books look to be very good.

i got it, and it's pretty good, but i have to critique a few points. many of the pictures are fuzzy, and the captions are lacking, ie: "a new haven train". ok, which one? where? when? there are some shots of new haven models that are actually lgb toys of no prototype they ever had, surely many of us would gladly include pics of our models for a little glory!
i realize this book was done perhaps more for mass market so i don't want to come across too snobby, but i think they could have worked a little closer w/ nhrrths and covered it better, left out the 'filler'.

It would be better if it had before & after pictures.

The author is a history teacher and knows very little about railroads. When Purple Mountain Press started on the manuscript they realized the problem. Wray sent the text and photos to me to fix.

I did what I could with the time constraints but I was still not happy with the finished book. You should have seen what it looked like before I worked on it. I fixed a lot of the major problems but did not have time to do a complete job. It would have involved a complete rewrite.

I would like to have had more time to work it over but the deadline came up too fast.

Bernie Rudberg

Mr. Rudberg you touched on an issue that I have been encoutering in books pertaining to other railroads. I believe that Railroad Historical Societies need to do more to reach out to the Academic Community and local libraries. I have encountered too many books in which I conclude that gee the existence of the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad Historical Society must be a deep dark secret or the Existence of the NHRHTA is a deep dark secret this is a shame because both of these Society's are well run and have excellent archives and helpful members.

I am planing a trip to New York in May. At some point I would like to see a forum set up in New York City area that invites key people from the major Railroad Historical Societies to a meeting place in the New York Area and invite various people from Academia as well as local libraries to a face to face meeting whereby we can be introduced and let ourselves be known more. The potential for promoting membership in the historical societies by a closer recognition by the academic community is an idea I have been thinking about for the last year. I haven't really figured out how best to go about it but I hope to meet some of the members of these historical societies, in my travels, if I do I definitely will submit the idea to them.

Best Wishes

Howard

Howard- You can't force people to do research. And as far as gathering the major historical societies together, what do you intend to accomplish? Will you be organizing this proposed meet?

-otto-

I got the word from Purple Mountain Press that Marc Newman's book about the Maybrook Yard is back from the printer and being distributed.

Bernie Rudberg

That is sort of old news. It happened back in November of last year.

Bernie Rudberg

Indeed Otto, with their many decades of publications, their websites, and their well attended meetings, the NHRHTA and the ELHS are certainly not secret organizations. If they are not know in the "intellectual community", I would suggest perhaps that community is not making enough effort to identify the resources that are available out there. In my experience some excellent railroad historical societies tend to be overlooked by big city historical groups, and it tends to be due to intellectual elitism rather than lack of communication.

I agree that academic historians and railfan historians often occupy different worlds. Back in the 1980s I had the experience of working with some non-railfan historical society types in connection with a rail book project, and while they were nice enough people, their expectations and style of presentation were so utterly different from what I had learned at David P. Morgan University that it wound up being very frustrating.

There are some happy exceptions, of course, such as the close cooperation between the University of Connecticut and NHRHTA.