B. A. Botkin (1901–1975)

A Treasury of Railroad Folklore is a large collection of short articles on all aspects of U.S. railroading from the 19th Century to the date of publication in 1947. The book is split into five parts: Iron Horses and Iron Men, Apprentice Years, Vanishing Types, Main Line and Sidetrack, and Blues, Ballads, and Work Songs. Each part has an introduction and then is subdivided into topic categories comprised of a number of short articles. The short articles run the gamut from strictly historical to strictly personal.

Iron Horses and Iron Men contains stories about railroad work and railroad heroes. Two of the more interesting stories concern Jesus Garcia, the hero of Nacozari, and the adventures of Harry Easton, the engineer of the Bostonian during the New England Hurricane of September 1938.

Apprentice Years is a collection of stories about people and happenings from the beginnings of railroads in the U.S. up through the 1940’s. There are the usual articles about the Andrews raid and Lincoln’s work as a lawyer for the Rock Island Railroad as well as articles about the first train dispatching/control by telegraph and how the Nickel Plate railroad got its name.

Vanishing Types is about people and “the other” railroads – boomers, bandits, hoboes, and cracker-barrel railroads. In addition to vanishing types the section describes vanishing practices as well such as pie-cards, train butchers, nailing a drag, “Pocatello Yardmasters”, and commuters’ lanterns.

Main Line and Sidetrack is all about working on the railroad and has sections about railroad work from the ordinary – the evolution of the track torpedo and the caboose - to the extraordinary - whistle artists ( engineers who could make their engines talk and sing via skillful use of the whistle cord).

The last part, Blues, Ballads, and Work Songs, is just that- a collection of these forms of artistic expression with a focus on the railroad.

The book also has an Appendix which is really just a collection of articles about things railroad that didn’t seem to fit into the first five categories – the battle of the track gauges, the coming of standard time, passenger train naming, etc. The book is well written. See "Common Knowledge" for an example of the writing style. (Text Length - 524 pages, Total Length - 530 pages, includes index.)… (más)