Kevin Keefe of Kalmbach gave this book a very good review both in Trains and in an online blog.
He did tell me twice, calling the book a “page turner”. So I put $17.82 on the Master Card which caused Amazon and UPS to cooperate and deliver one copy of the book to a place inside my screen door.
I found Keefe to be right about the “page turner” thing. Despite being dog tired from work I finished it in two nights. If the book’s author, Robert Klara, isn’t a railfan he sure gives a good impression of being one. The book is set against a railroad background and Klara knows and understands that background.
The train’s route (Southern-Pennsylvania-New Haven-New York Central) is correctly identified and chronicled. Klara names engineers and other employees called for duty. On pages 10-11 he describes a Southern Railway foreman, Ferman White, who simply heard the news of FDR’s death after going off duty. He then took initiative, called in, and is quoted as saying: “We’ll need two light Pacific (engines). What have you got in site?” He knew that FDR’s body was going to be moved from Warm Springs, Georgia and that the Southern Railway was going to do it.
The book has many such rail related tales. Railroad carpenters are called to construct loading platforms for FDR’s heavy copper casket. They work though the wee hours of the morning. An engineer backs his heavy steam powered train down to one of the platforms and stops the right car precisely at the platform on a simple hand signal. A GG1 starting 18 heavyweight passenger cars breaks three knuckles before getting out of Washington, DC. The knuckles are replaced quickly and the Gee gets the train into Penn Station on time.
I took two things away from the book. One is that it’s about Americans step