Went to the Greenberg train show in Chantilly this weekend and made an amazing purchase/ I found the Norfolk & Western Railway Pocahontas coal carrier book by Richard E. Prince. It is an out of print book and it has AMAZING amount of info. From the plan of the Roanoke shops, the complete engine roaster for the N&W and it is FILLED with information that I did not know. For instance di you know that because Pens. RR purchased 30+ % of N&W stock that they were able to seat management in N&W ? Also because of this the Penn. RR sold N&W five K3 in 1930 !!! And there is a photo of a K3 with Norfolk & Western 500 on the cab in the book !
They also got round roof boxcars & passenger and head end cars from them as well as those cool position light signals.
The Prince books are usually very expensive (for his originals) but some have been reprinted and reasonable. The N&W & Norfolk Southern (original RR) have not been reprinted as far as I know. They are well worth the prices though as you discovered.
Thanks for the comments. Yes the book is VERY expensive. I have heard rumors that the book can go for as much as $150. I think this is either the only print version of first. The book was printed in the 80s. No second printing mentioned.
Dinwitty, Tom if you do not mind me asking what did the book go for in your neck of the woods ? Is the RF&P as good as the N&W version ? Yea I was amazed to find Virginia stuff in the back.
I live in Maryland and got 2 of my books from a hobby shop that was going out of business in Northern VA. I got them for a very affordable price because
The seller knew me & considered me a friend.
He offered them to me for a very affordable price because he had gotten them at low prices (estate sale, I think) & was not taking a loss.
He did not specialize in books & did not want to deal with a different type of inventory.
He needed to move them because he was going out of business & didn’t want to spend time & effort getting a better price.
I got a great deal on the 3-volume Pennsylvania Logging Series (Kline, Taber, et. al.) at the same time.
The third Prince book was a gift.
To answer your question, I have heard that original Prince books have gone for $200+, but that would not be in my personal budget and I don’t know how close that is to the average or median price. What a seller asks for the book is not necessarily the price he would accept.
The Prince books can go for amazingly high prices. Are they worth it? Depends on how much you want it or need it really! I think so! They all have the railroad history, class-by-class roster photos & information including builders numbers, built/shopping/scrapping dates, diagrams and sections on freight & passenger operations. One very cool inclusion is the related shortline data in the back of each book. Sometimes it’s the only way to get info on these roads. Yep…they ARE WORTH the money!
I paid some steep prices for a few of them until I found out Mr Prince was still alive and well (back in the 1980s). I wrote to him asking about book availability. He sent a very nice letter back stating which books he had on hand and the prices. I got the NC&StL, L&N, RF&P, SAL, N&W and GA books for $35 each plus postage.
I’ve seen the NS, ACL, RF&P and N&W books go over $250. The University of Indiana (I think) has reprinted some of them. They are much cheaper but the paper and photo quality are not very good from what I’ve seen. The original books had a lot of dark photos and they were on a rough, porus paper that didn’t reproduce as well as the more common slick paper we’re used to in most current publications.