Obviously, with great effort and kindness, the complete set of this series was brought to Ontario by one of my mother's British penpals many decades ago. Many years later, my father offered the set to me from its special archival area within his garage.
No other 'aged' publication has the particular scent of these magazines - and I do have many classic works which were clearly archived in people's basements. Perhaps this set was infused with the not unpleasant essence of coal tar, from being near a coal cellar holding Welsh coal ... or something similar.
The publication's weakness (for those interested solely in Canada, or the UK, or the US) is that the publishers carefully assembled a wonderful treasury of documentation about world railways and put it into a blender. This made it compelling as a series to be purchased ... but hard to index for historical research. For example, if you do manage to locate all the articles on the CPR, you are sure to find assorted official CPR photos inserted at random elsewhere in the series.
... For many years, a dedicated individual has maintained a website to preserve and present this entire set and he was successful in indexing the main railway topics. The website still exists today if you are interested.
To some extent - for me as a 'mature student' - the joy of randomly finding some quaint, colonial railway demonstrating the *technological power of simple flanged wheels on rails is part of the charm of the series. (*That is: their roadbed surmounts rough terrain requiring only a narrow 'footprint'; they are low friction and self-steering - among other advantages.)
... On one tropical railway, an article includes a photo of individual labourers pushing individual carts of local agriculture products along a undulating, gently-descending route ... toward an intermodal terminal ... where water will take over so the items can reach the 'Centre of the Empire'. A 'rail way' doesn't get more basic than that.
So, if you enjoy watching the enduring technological power and simplicity of seasonal sugar cane railways in Indonesia on YouTube ... within this series you can see similar railways when they were new. And back in 1935, the original imperial powers (unless they had been defeated in World War One) still watched over the operations of the colonial railways depicted.
* * *
There are a couple of anachronisms in the article which follows ... describing people of some identifiable groups. However, these descriptions were fairly common and 'correct' in Britain, 90 years ago when the article was written.
Walter E Scott (1872-1954) was also known as Death Valley Scotty.
He is well-documented on today's internet. A little research turned up an entire episode about him on an early TV series looking at historical legends of the Wild West ... Death Valley Days. I have provided the YouTube link for the Death Valley Scotty episode below.
In the TV show, you'll notice a representation of the legendary 18-mule + 2-horse teams pulling borax wagons from mine to railhead. These mules continue their uphill work today on grocery store boxes of borax.... Perhaps an apt contrast to all that gritty, macho, mule-team misery would be to cite the 'technological power' of the nearby Trona Railway (the 'Three Elephant Route').
Today, Scotty's Castle has its own pin in Google Maps and the site is now operated by the US National Park Service. The Google pin includes photos - so be sure to have a look at them.
The railroad exploit described is richly portrayed during the first 15 minutes of the Death Valley Days show and the ATSF was actively involved in the re-enactment of the run with one of their steam locomotives.
end
