My father has a pretty extensive railroad book collection consisting of the traditional "rail fan" books and industry books contemporary to the steam era. The former are what I spent most of my time thumbing through as a minor, the latter are what intrigue me most today. It's neat to see what was cutting edge technology to the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's railroad professionals.

While building my layout, I've found the Railway Engineering and Maintenance Cyclopedias most interesting. These Cyclopedia's have sections on Track (covering everything from grading to derails), bridges (types, maintenance, construction, etc.), buildings, water service (pipes, storage, treatment) and signals.  My attention most recently has been on ballast and ballast section - fascinating.

Dad has the 1929 and 1948 Maintenance Cyclopedias.  The former has been most useful to me since I model 1938.  However, the other day I found a 1938 edition for sale and ended up purchasing it (from Jackson St. Booksellers, Omaha via Abe Books) to have a Cyclopedias at ten year intervals in the family.

I went straight to the track section to see what changed in ten years. Given there were a lot of railroad improvements installed in the late twenties / early thirties and 1938 was still a time of slow business, I wasn't sure what to expect. The first thing I noticed were a lot more photos of labor saving devices, and much more "modern" ones. For example, there are a lot of crawler tractors in use in all capacities, which makes 1938 look much more similar to modern methods. The 1929 Cyclopedia, conversely, had a lot more photos of large track gangs manually working the right of way. There were some mechanical devices in use in the earlier Cyclopedia, but they were on the wealthier railroads and had more of a Rube Goldberg look.

I don't know if that observation (more mechanical labor saving devices) will hold over the rest of the book, but I think has an interesting parallel to changes in modern industry following the 2008 financial crisis. Modern business responded to that recession by finding ways to become more efficient via greater automation. It looks like the result was the same while industry struggled to get out of the depression.

These books are not inexpensive, but are fantastic resources.

Matt