The Railroad Book: Story and Pictures

This book was originally published in 1913. It is a very high quality picture book. As with other picture books published in the early part of the 1900s, there is a lot of text on each page. The illustrations are just absolutely gorgeous: museum like quality paintings. About every other page is a full color painting with a high level of detail. The other pages are adorned with black line drawings. The book is arranged in chapters. The story is about a brother and a sister who live near a newly constructed train line. The children fall in love with the trains and want to learn all about them. The children get to know the train workers who teach them, in high detail, about the workings of the train. The children go on a train ride in the cab with the engineer, a visit to the roundhouse, seeing a break-down crane train, a visit to the freight yard, and a trip inside a passenger coach. There are similar stories and adventures, which I am not listing here. This book is very detailed yet held the interest of my train loving 3 year-old. I highly recommend it for all young train lovers. I wish there were more books on the market like this one. After reading this, the modern children's books look like very watered down text with lesser quality illustrations.Due to the high level of detail, this book ends up being educational in nature, although written as pure storytelling. It is also not at all boring to for the adult to read to children!