Check it out: Get on track with state author’s book on trains in Gorge
By Jan Johnston
Published: August 14, 2016, 6:05am
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"Columbia River Gorge Railroads" by D.C. Jesse Burkhardt (Arcadia Publishing, 95 pages)
Are you a train enthusiast?
A new book titled “Columbia River Gorge Railroads” just arrived at the library, and it’s loaded with photographs. Covering both the Washington and Oregon sides of the Columbia River Gorge, author D.C. Jesse Burkhardt shares the history of the area’s rail lines through a compilation of captioned photographs, many of which are from his own collection.
Burkhardt was the editor of the White Salmon newspaper, The Enterprise, from 1994 to 2011, so his connection with railroads is very local indeed. But his interest in trains began much earlier.
“Railroads caught my spirit when I was a kid growing up near an east-west mainline in southern Michigan. … There was something magical about standing alongside those tracks … feeling the wind in my face and seeing the distant twinkle of an emerald signal light.”
The library has several books by Burkhardt, so if you enjoy his latest book, consider adding one or more of his other titles to your locomotive reading list.
For me, trains evoke a time and a place when boarding a train for an excursion was as common as boarding a plane is for us today. My husband and I have taken several train trips to destinations in Washington and Oregon, and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed these outings, but we’ll never be able to experience the kind of train travel our grandparents might have undertaken.
That’s why books such as Burkhardt’s “Columbia River Gorge Railroads” are important: They offer the reader a chance to visit a bygone era.
The library has many other train-related titles, so if riding the rails figures high on your list of must-do activities, get on track by absorbing as much locomotive information as you can. Oh, and just so you know, getting a ride on the “crazy train” is not an option. It derailed a long time ago. Same goes for the gravy train.
All aboard!
• “The Complete Book of North American Railroading” by Kevin EuDaly.
• “Fifty Railroads that Changed the Course of History” by Bill Laws.
• “Freight Weather: The Art of Stalking Trains” by D.C. Jesse Burkhardt.
• “Illustrated Book of Steam and Rail: The History and Development of the Train and an Evocative Guide to the World’s Great Train Journeys” by Colin Garratt.
• “The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America” by Williams G. Thomas.
• “Locomotives: The Modern Diesel & Electric Reference” by Greg McDonnell.
• “Railroads Across North America: An Illustrated History” by Claude A. Wiatrowski.
Jan Johnston is the collection development coordinator for the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District. Email her at readingforfun@fvrl.org.
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