RPR Consulting

Technical Library

At RPR, we’re great believers in not reinventing the wheel. Consequently, one of our most rewarding pursuits is collecting technical books and documentation from the golden years of the railway industry, with special emphasis on early 20th century U.S. electric railway subjects. Our library directly supports our consulting work in many ways, providing hands-on technical information that is still relevant today, and also documenting the evolution of the industry. By illuminating the past, our library helps us keep today’s projects in perspective.

Our library is by no means the most unique or the most comprehensive, but we have enjoyed building it over the years, and we’re always on the look out for new titles to add. The listing is presented here as a resource to others. We hope that those of you with similar interests might spot some new titles to look for, and we also hope that if you have electric railway titles that are not on our list, you’ll contact us. In cases where no copyright issues exist, (applicable to many of the books here due to their age), it is also practical to exchange electronic copies or ordinary photocopies. We’re working more and more with scanned documents, and expect this to continue to be a growing avenue for exchanging technical data. From time to time, we also acquire duplicate copies, and these are occasionally available for sale or trade.

The books are grouped into a couple of major categories, and listed alphabetically. The left hand column contains a reference number for original copies in our library. We also collect periodicals such as Electric Railway Journal, and publications such as the Car Builder’s and Locomotive Builder’s Cyclopedias, but these are fairly common items and as such are not listed here.

We hope the list is of some use, and we look forward to hearing from you. Future projects include turning our library list into an actual database, reviews and excerpts from of some of our favorite books, and various compilation projects. Compilation we’re interested in include all of the publications issued by the Association of Railway Museum over the years, (especially the many smaller run publications offered at the annual conventions). We’re also interested in locating or compiling a listing of all the International Correspondence School (ICS) and International Textbook Company (ITC) railway subject books.