by lvrr325
Recently picked up the 1982 "Mr. Cornell's Railroad And How it Grew: Elmira To Camden" which covers the EC&N/Lehigh Valley line including the NY&OM branch out of Norwich.
It amazed me to see two, $20 retail, softbound books cover the same line (more recently covered in "The Ups & Downs Of A Rural Line: The Elmira, Cortland & Northern") - and manage not to duplicate much of each other, there's only a few photos I noticed used in both books. (some of the NY&OM stuff is duplicated in Taibi's NYO&W Oswego to Sidney book).
The older book is mostly photographs, old letters, newspaper articles, timetables, and maps, often with hand-drawn additions. There's a few good 1972-era pictures of LV trains, and some good shots behind the Cornell steam plant. It was worth waiting two years for one to turn up for a reasonable price, at one point the only one I could find online a book seller wanted $150 on. Figured he was nuts when I caught an old eBay listing that closed for about $24. So I waited.
This book was published by a small outfit in Ithaca and a lot of the pictures are not top quality to start with; it's all B&W and some of the photos the focus is a tad soft, or they have bright spots in them, but for the most part they're reasonable if you're not spoiled by all of today's modern printed stuff. It shows a bunch of things I've yet to find covered anywhere else. Probably the most amazing thing is a shot of a Utica, Ithaca and Elmria inspection car, circa 1880s - it looks like a large trolley and is clearly self-propelled, but it's not an inspection engine with a coach body built over a small steam engine. If it were newer I'd suspect it to be a gas electric.
It amazed me to see two, $20 retail, softbound books cover the same line (more recently covered in "The Ups & Downs Of A Rural Line: The Elmira, Cortland & Northern") - and manage not to duplicate much of each other, there's only a few photos I noticed used in both books. (some of the NY&OM stuff is duplicated in Taibi's NYO&W Oswego to Sidney book).
The older book is mostly photographs, old letters, newspaper articles, timetables, and maps, often with hand-drawn additions. There's a few good 1972-era pictures of LV trains, and some good shots behind the Cornell steam plant. It was worth waiting two years for one to turn up for a reasonable price, at one point the only one I could find online a book seller wanted $150 on. Figured he was nuts when I caught an old eBay listing that closed for about $24. So I waited.
This book was published by a small outfit in Ithaca and a lot of the pictures are not top quality to start with; it's all B&W and some of the photos the focus is a tad soft, or they have bright spots in them, but for the most part they're reasonable if you're not spoiled by all of today's modern printed stuff. It shows a bunch of things I've yet to find covered anywhere else. Probably the most amazing thing is a shot of a Utica, Ithaca and Elmria inspection car, circa 1880s - it looks like a large trolley and is clearly self-propelled, but it's not an inspection engine with a coach body built over a small steam engine. If it were newer I'd suspect it to be a gas electric.