It is nice to find that ERIE LACKAWANNA MEMORIES has achieved some visibility as a book, but Matt's observations come close to pointing out something about it that has pretty much been forgotten with the passing of time.
ERIE LACKAWANNA MEMORIES was not originally written as a book. It was in fact a written conversion of the narration of a frequently shown slide show, that was first put together following the demise of the railroad, and was subsequently made into a synchronized music-tape-slide program in the early 1980s (hard to believe that was 25 years ago). It was shown very extensively during the 10th anniversary of the passing of the railroad in 1986. It had quite a few showings in the Northeast at that time, and was the first program shown at the first Eastrail event.
There were enough requests for a printed version of the tape slide program that it was decided to try to adapt the narration and as much of the format as possible to a book. The primary difference between the book and the slide show is that there was room for less than half of the slide show images in the 128 page book format, people who saw the slide show after they got the book often commented about that. It was the first all-color book published by Old Line Graphics and came out at just about the same time as TIDEWATER TRIANGLE, which was the first of the Morning Sun books.
For the 30th anniversary in 2006 the program was converted to PowerPoint and was shown again to groups that requested to see it. I think the PowerPoint version is actually the best of all, the captioning and flow are improved, you don't have to lug around two projectors and a slide sync unit, and there is never any trouble with slides getting stuck in the projector gates because the images are all electronic now.
Before anybody writes to me inquiring about future showings of the slide program please let me point out that no further showings are planned. I have gone almost entirely back to writing and have cut down substantially on doing lectures and programs. It is much too expensive now to make long driving trips to show slides. In this situation the time is much better spent researching and writing magazine articles since the audience is much larger and the method of presentation is more permanent. The only situations where I am likely to do any programs in the future are for Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania or the Railroad Museum of New England, if either of them needs me to do something for a special event.
I don't get much chance to participate in internet discussions any more, so I would like to take this opportunity to say thanks to all the groups that hosted showings of EL MEMORIES, INSIDE EMD, and all my other programs over the last 35 years.
PC
