Jesse, the author is Dee Brown.
Murnane, I'm glad you liked the Spearman and Packard books.
I guess it is also good to know that someone likes On the Blue Coment - I didn't. I had two big issues with the book plot and content. From the plot standpoint, why didn't it ever occur to Oscar to go back and save his mother? From the fact standpoint - I couldn't stand the factual errors not only with respect to toy trains but also with respect to the timeline of historical events. On the other hand, if you just treat it as an adventure story to be read to a grandkid as a bedtime story then I guess its ok.
Rich Melvin - Bedwell also wrote the novel The Boomer: A Story of the Rails which, of course, was about Eddie Sand. As a side note, if you can't find any of the Railroad Magazines some of Bedwell's short stories have been collected in other books of railroad fiction - for example his story "Smart Boomer" can be found in Short Lines: A collection of Classic American Railroad Stories by Johnson
