D. C. Jesse Burkhardt

Two sets of railroad tracks cut through the beautiful Columbia Gorge on opposite sides of the river. It’s a juxtaposition of powerful machines and even larger scenery. A new book by D.C. Jesse Burkhardt celebrates the grandeur of the landscape and an enduring fascination with trains. The photographs and captions that fill the thin volume tell the story of the modern rail lines: the Burlington Northern Sante Fe on the Washington shore and the Union Pacific rolling parallel in Oregon. These companies of today are the result of competition and the corporate mergers of the past. Their histories are offered in captions — paragraphs accompanied by photographs — that are ideal for browsing.

Most of the book’s photographs are in color, most were taken in the last 25 years, and many are the work of the author. You begin to sense his familiarity with each locomotive, car, insignia, color scheme, and curve of the rails. Over the course of the book, he shows freight cars, hoppers, containers, centerbeams, passenger cars, dinner trains, locomotives, and cabooses. The trains haul grain, coal, gravel, trash, military vehicles, and lumber. They arrive at depots. An unlucky few have accidents. In one photo two locomotives — separated in age by nearly 100 years — pass each other on adjacent tracks. They are the old and the new, both still going strong. [Note: While this book is primarily contemporary pictures, you can see historical photographs in the Burkhardt’s earlier Railroads of the Columbia River Gorge; Arcadia Publishing, 2004.]

This isn’t simply a train book. The heart of this collection is the author’s pairing of trains with the spectacular Columbia Gorge. There are images of high basalt cliffs, mountains, waterfalls, and the mighty Columbia River itself. Somewhere in each of those landscapes a train rolls through, charges out of a tunnel, pushes through snow, or races along the river bank. We wished only that some of the more beautiful photographs were larger in order for us to see every detail. While he never takes us aboard, the author is forever watching the trains go by. This book is a train-watcher’s holiday.

Shelf Appeal: Railroad aficionados will enjoy the fact-filled captions and many scenic train images in this thin volume.

-- I wrote this review for the Books section of the Washington state website: http://www.WA-List.com… (mehr)