Instructional Books With a Cool Strasburg Connection

Very cool find.

I have a lot of those soft-cover volumes--they are definitely useful, if not a bit on the fragile side.

Very interesting.  I took ICS courses on air brakes and locomotives, back in the 1970's.  It was several courses under one heading.  The books were well-written and the testing was not easy.  In all, I'm glad I took the courses.  Now, the books . . . they disappeared in one of our corporate moves.  They would have been handy reference material from time to time.

Those books should greatly benefit your understanding of the topics.  Good investment.

Kelly Anderson posted:

I imagine that they are in excellent condition.  Huber had no interest or understanding of anything technical, and I expect that the only time he ever cracked those volumes open was to stamp his name in them.

They are indeed.  That's interesting to know, thanks for sharing 

That's too bad that he probably never looked at them as they're very nicely written and well detailed on the subject.  

smd4 posted:

I have a lot of those soft-cover volumes--they are definitely useful, if not a bit on the fragile side.

My boss has a fairly extensive collection of the hard covered ones I believe by the same organization which he loans us for reference fairly frequently.  They're well written books that explain the information well.

Yes, I have most of the semi-hard cover "blue" books. They were also published in years past in a red hard cover binding.

The soft-cover volumes that I have like yours above, for those interested, are:

--Laying Off Shoes and Wedges;

--Cylinder, Guide, and Crosshead Repair Work;

--Locomotive Rod, Wheel, and Pin Work;

--Machining Frame Cross-Ties;

--Locomotive Steam-Pipe and Spring Work;

--Laying Off Locomotive Frames;

--Locomotive Cylinder and Erecting Work.

As I typed these out, it appears the brown soft-covers are all meant for steam locomotive mechanics, machinists and shop workers; the hard-covers are more geared to engine crew and operations.

Kelly Anderson posted:

All of the titles were printed in both hard and soft cover versions.  My understanding is that they sent the soft cover books as work books to their students, and sent the hard cover books as a reference after the student graduated.

Interesting. I've never seen the soft covers in hard-copy before, or vice-versa.

Back years ago (1979) Wildwood Publications issued a 4 volume set of all the Steam Locomotive Study Course "pamphlets". One might try to find those in used book stores, or maybe on eBay.