I just finished reading Brian Solomon’s CSX and thought it an excellent short work. The prose made sense, the history flowed well, it was mostly in color: some of the pix were routine, but a few were spectacular: see p. 150 if you’re browsing.
Now, this series of books is smaller than coffee-table format. It’s a laminated hardbound (they all have color pictures of their subject on the cover). From what I’ve read and researched, they all run in the neighborhood of 150 pp.
My only surprise is a quasi-gripe at best, and may well be the selling point for many RR enthusiasts: The last three chapters dealt with surprising specificity about recent ops: who bought which locomotives, what kind of freight was hauled, post-Conrail service (and even squeezes in a brief paean to B&O’s “CPL” signals). Not full rosters, of course, but many locomotives are named by number.
In CSX, author Solomon tends to use some technical RR terms, some of which will be over the heads of most of the “general reading public,” but that gets the story told more efficiently without condescending to 'fanners. (Besides, if you know anyone who’s reading the book, they can always ask you, right? [;)] ) In terms of current operations (not history, which is pretty balanced), I thought the Chessie component got a little more coverage proportionally than the Family Lines roads did.
At nearly thirty-seven dollars, the book is not cheap but if you need the name of a used-book service or two, feel free to email me. (I don’t want to promote rival publishers while I am enjoying the tender graces of Kalmbach Publications.)