Nelson Bay asked me to comment on this book, I recently took a look at it, so here are my thoughts. By the way, I should also tell you that I have never attempted to write a history of Electro-Motive, so any comments I make here can probably be dismissed as unqualified criticism.
I don’t see where this book in any way diminishes the need for a comprehensive history of Electro-Motive, such a work remains to be written, and when it is done it will need to include at least some of the scope of their military and power products production in addition to their locomotive products, because most of their production during World War Two was for the military. That is what makes an all-time history of EMD such a daunting task, there are vast areas of business activity that have received very little mention in the railroad enthusiast press. Beyond that, I cannot take issue with any of the comments that several participants in the discussion made in previous postings, I think they have all brought up very valid concerns. I think Phil Hom's comment is very accurate, this is the companion for the author’s GE book.
But let me ask this: Are detailed studies of history really of interest among railroad enthusiasts any more? Sometimes it doesn't seem that they are. At a recent national convention of one of our largest railroad historical societies, presentations on history topics were allowed only a very small part of one day, in the midst of a full week of fantrips, and weren’t even mentioned in the summary of the event. And the really popular and highly attended events now seem to be the slide-music shows. So how much do you learn from looking at slides for five seconds each while music plays in the background? The standard nowadays is to set up the equipment, hit “enter” on the computer, and watch 300 slides accompanied by ten songs with no narration and very few captions, and then pack everything up and drive home. It’s kind of the railfanning version of MTV.
I am just as guilty of this as everybody else, since I have done several slide-music shows too. It sure makes a real nice easy evening for the program presenter, showing a slide-music program is a lot less work than doing a program that requires narration. But is the hosting group missing out on something when I drive a long distance to visit them (maybe the only time I will ever visit their group), and they want me to show them a program where I just sit there and watch the show with them, without having to talk?
So with this “Railroad History Lite” being served as the brew of choice at the monthly meetings and annual conventions of our historical organizations, what can we reasonably expect of our authors and publishers? Do we expect them to work to different standards than the rest of us?
