Hello.
Does anybody have an idea why some places say this book is by Tony Koester, others say the author is Lionel Strang.
Thanks.
No idea why some places would credit it to one person while others would credit it to someone else. But I’ve read it, and it’s most assuredly been written by Tony. Says so right on the cover:
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/kalmbachcatalog_1923_766970
Steve
I just did a Google search - The Kalmbach site says Tony Koester(on the book cover), and the Amazon site shows Lionel Strang on the cover - Strange!
Jim
Yup, and Amazon’s “Look Inside” function shows Koester again.
Just bought this book from the german amazon. Somebody recommended Koester’s book somewhere and I had used amazon’s look inside to see the table of contents etc… After receiving confirmation e-mail saying I had bought Strang’s book I thought I had bought a wrong one.
But it seems that the cover is same (excluding author of course), and also number of pages and ISBN codes are alike.
I have the Book “Realistic Model Railroad Operation” and it was authored by Tony Koester. I consider it a nice addition to my model railroad library.
JIM
That is strange!
Especially since at the Amazon site, the bottom third of the cover has a different picture on the “Strang version”.
But when you click on it you get a larger view of the “Koester version”.
Yup, I can understand the OP’s confusion. If I hadn’t held a copy of the “Koester version” in my hand (I checked it out at the library), I’d be confused as well.
Steve
Well, I’m quite confident now that I’ll receive Koester’s book too. Maybe the cover has been designed and the book has been promoted before the author has been confirmed… Strang and Koester are both MR staff, right?
Additional question for those who have also John Armstrong’s Track Planning for Realistic Operation.
Do you think Koester’s book is enough or does Armstrong’s book contain some additional information that makes it worth buying also?
They are night and day different. Briefly the Armstrong book looks at real railroads and then gives techniques for modeling them. The Koester Book is more about setting up operations on your railroad, eg. how to use car cards. etc.
I have both, but if I had to choose one, I’d pick the Armstrong book. It would get my vote as best MRR book out there.
The Armstrong book looks at Track Planning, based on prototype operations. It deals with stuff like size of a yard, how to model a yard ladder, minimum radius curves, grade differences, different industries you can model, etc. TK’s book is about the operations themselves, be it car card, time table, etc. for running on a completed MRR.
FT