A Summer Reading Suggestion

Outside the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum

 I read Set Up Running: The Life of a Pennsylvania Railroad Engineman 1904-1949 when it first came out in 2005. It remains my favorite railroad book and I have re-read it two more times. Set Up Running details the life of Oscar Orr, a Pennsylvania engineer, from his first job to his retirement. It is told by his son John and consists of a series of stories the father told the son about the workings of the railroad. You come away from this book with a great appreciation for what it must have been like to haul coal up and down a Pennsylvania branch line day in and day out using a 2-10-0 for power.

The only drawback this book has is that it was written by the son and there is only so much he can say about his father's job. A job he never experienced himself. But that is actually a small detail in what is otherwise a great book and a tribute to both the stories the elder Orr told and the memory of the younger Orr.

I wish there were more books like this. I realize there is a place in the world for the books that detail how much common stock was sold, how long it took to receive a state charter and how building the line from Nowhere to Noplace was accomplished. The trouble with those books is that they all blend together and they are dry. What I want to see more of are stories about how locomotives handled? Why an abandoned patch of dirt that used to be a well-traveled line was important? What it was like to work day in and day out moving freight and people over the line? 

That is the kind of book Set Up Running is and that is why I like it so much.