Jim Fredrickson

Railscapes: a Northern Pacific Brasspounder's Album Jim Fredrickson

Brimming with spectacular photographs and a trainman's vivid memories, Railscapes is an exceptional album, filled with the author?s unbounded enthusiasm, love, and respect for the whole world of trains. Jim Fredrickson?s third book covers more than six decades of American railroading, and offers insider's insights on the business of moving men and materials via the great steel ribbons that connected the Pacific Northwest with the rest of the world.

For 38 years, the author worked for the Northern Pacific in Washington state as a telegraph operator?a "brasspounder"?and dispatcher. He had the good fortune to work and travel in some of the most beautiful territory in the United States, and his camera covered it all ? from the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and Idaho, to the Cascade Range of Washington, to the Puget Sound coastal region.

Since his teens, Fredrickson has been ready to capture on film both ordinary workhorse engines as well as special, magnificent, vintage, or futuristic trains. Drawn from an immense collection of railroad images, "Railscapes" features more of Jim?s favorite photographs of train wrecks, premier passenger trains, the last of the steam engines, railroad folks, and more.