Rediscovering "lost" common knowledge - where to find?

Teach younger family. Talk too much about it  to everyone. Effort to get rid of things Im not as interested in, to those who are, vs disposal.(literature esp.), etc...

 A Rail-Wiki? or Rail Wayback Machine?.. Got it in ya Cap.? Got the cap.?($)

Try a Google search.  The term "railroad overland route" returns quite a history of the origin and usage of the Overland Route on the UP.  The internet is a wonderful thing with so much information instantly available.  Thank you Al Gore. 

The internet may be a wonderful thing, but it doesn't have all the answers.  Many times in an attempt to find an answer, I get sent scurrying to my books for the answer because the web doesn't have it.

Perhaps, I'm fortunate and began building my library as a teenager in the 1960's, long before there was an internet.  Initially, I bought books for railroads of specific interest to me, then later bought one for railroads I has only a passing interest.  By no means is my "library" complete, but it has helped in answering questions.

It seems nowadays that folks are willing to plop down a grand or more for a model locomotive, but shudder at the thought of plopping down 60-70 bucks for a railroad  book.

Rusty

Try Google Books and Archive.org. They have THOUSANDS of FREE ebooks available. I personally have several hundred of these books. Of course I had to spend $150 on a 2TB hard drive to hold all those .pdfs but I have darned near the entire body of trade magazines ever published for the Electric Railway industry between 1884 and 1932. for instance, there are several Locomotive Cyclopedias online

google books:

 http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

archive.org

http://archive.org/index.php

1922 "Cyc.':

http://books.google.com/books?id=oMY1AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=locomotive+cyclopedia&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2XSXUb-3E-bq0AHH0IDwDA&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=locomotive%20cyclopedia&f=false

quote:

 trying to find out what the term "Overland Route" meant.

I believe it refers to the Overland Trail, as in before railroads.

Many of us are preserving books with the knowledge of the old days, which we are willing to share. Just ask big Jim. =)

Other than that, you can get your own:

http://www.youroldtimebookstore.com/

"Wikis" can be good and bad...remember that they're written by anyone, and can be wrong ocasionally....some of the star trek stuff is wrong....  ....seriously though, old books are the best bet, but they're hard to find. I can remember alot of books when I was a kid, that our local library had, that I just can't find anymore. "Out of print" means out of luck or out of pocket..$$$.

I agree about finding the books that are out of print. They are like a time machine and so far the best for hard to find information. Thanks for all of the replies so far!

The Overland Route isn't simply a generic Union Pacific term.  It refers to a specific line from Chicago to San Francisco.  Remember the UP had a route to Los Angeles, too.  That was not the Overland.  From Chicago to Omaha, the Overland Route was C&NW.  From Omaha to Ogden, it was UP and from Ogden to San Francisco, the Southern Pacific.  

Many of these lines took their names from the wagon trails, because they were the safer routes to reach the West.  The Santa Fe trail, Chisholm , Oregon and California trail existed for a long time before the railroads took hold. 

Southern Pacific was known for their four main lines.  The Overland Route, the Shasta Route, the Golden State Route and the Sunset.  All of these routes had trains named after them.

I understand what you mean by lost knowledge and human reference points.  But the information is out there.  Just keep plugging away.  You might then become the human reference.

i hate to state the obvious, but what about railroad forums... like this one?

i notice that without looking, your question actually got answered amidst all this noise about where to search for information.

i do agree that books are an all important adjunct to internet searches.  i doubt if i would be able to locate online the sort of information available in the few American Flyer, Hafner, Bing, etc. books i trust.  other material like the TCA Quarterly add some valuable information on many obscure topics.  just the sort of things you are talking about, luckily documented perhaps before being lost.