HIGHBALL A Pageant of Trains by Beebe, Lucius - 1945

NY: D. Appleton-Century. Good+ with no dust jacket. 1945. First Edition. Hardcover. This is a large book and is not eligible for Priority, Air or International under standard fees. Minor wear and soil on the sound binding. Brief gift note on ffep. Minor foxing of first and last few pages, otherwise the contents are clean and unworn. No DJ. ; 8" x 11-1/8", 225pp. Red cloth, dulled-gold lettering in black spine panels, almost bright gold lettering in front cover black spine panels. REFERENCE / HISTORY. "HIGHBALL has been brought into being in the full knowledge that profound change is at hand in the shops and roundhouses and dispatchers' offices of the countryside and that, indeed, many of the most fascinating chapters of the legend must already be written in the past tense and that the would-be historian must seize upon all the glamour that is left to the rails if he is to preserve any part of it for the dreary and Diesel-shrouded future. The borrowed time on which a vast number of little railraods have been living is, as this is beng written coming to a close. I have hoped to preserve a little of them for the record. " Contents: Some little railroads; Power for the grade; Portrait gallery; The Pennsy and the Pacific; Colorado chronicle; Crummies. ... Includes a page , "Whistle Code", which also includes the Conductor's Signals. Over 160 b/w photos. "Highball: Railroad parlance for a clearance, clear track, or order to proceed, deriving from the metal globes by which train movements were controlled before the introduction of semaphores or other position signals. " .