The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (VA) (Images of Rail) Review

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(More customer reviews)When you think of the C&O you tend to think of three things: long coal trains being pulled by those massive Allegheny 2-6-6-6 steam engines, the effort they put into their high class passenger service, and of course the sleeping kitty 'Chessie.' And in this book, each of these gets a full chapter.
As the book is composed almost entirely of pictures, here are images of a rail system that now is long gone. Even the C&O itself dissappeared into the massive CSX system almost twenty years ago. That was just after the author started researching the C&O. And in this book he is sharing his collection of C&O materials with the rest of us. Here are pictures of a wide range of C&O steam power, unfortunately most of which now exist only in the form of pictures with the original engines shipped to the scrap yard. Here is a picture of the experimental coal-burning, steam-turbine-electric locomotive that they tried (coal was cheap, diesel was not).
All in all, this book is a great tribute to the C&O during its glory years.

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In the late 1860s, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) pushed its first tracks westward from Virginia's Tidewater region across the mountains into what was then the new state of West Virginia. Ultimately its tracks stretched across a half-dozen states and even into Canada. Appalachian coal was the C&O's primary cargo, but its fast freights carried shipments of all kinds, and its crack passenger trains were marvels of their day. In 1963, the C&O merged with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the first of what would become a wave of railroad mergers. Today the old C&O is part of giant CSX Transportation. Images of Rail: The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway gathers 200 photographs that chronicle the C&O story. Here is a fond look back at its mammoth steam locomotives and the diesels that replaced them, its bustling passenger stations, and much more, including the legendary John Henry, who beat that steam drill, and Chessie, the sleeping kitten that was the C&O's much-loved trademark.

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