Kalmbach Publishing Softcover Book 12802 Express, Mail & Merchandise Service

Author: Jeff Wilson
Softcover, 2016, 8.5 x 11, 96 pages, mostly vintage black and white photographs, some color, tables, bibliography.

EXPRESS, MAIL and MERCHANDISE SERVICE is a prototype guide to modeling package, express, and mail traffic. This book: Provides a historical perspective when railroad personnel actually handled packages and merchandise - everything from baby chicks and cornflakes to money and machinery - and got them to their final destination. Includes chapters on freight houses and transfer terminals, baggage cars and other equipment, operations, and express companies like the Railway Express Agency. Provides modelers of the earlier periods of the 20th century with ideas and examples they might want to consider for their layouts, particularly if their concentration is on he early 1900s through the 1960s.

In EXPRESS, MAIL and MERCHANDISE SERVICE, Jeff Wilson, our author, strives to unravel the mysteries of express rail and merchandise traffic. The result is a splendid overview utilizing vintage photographs and narrative that will help the modeler apply just this type of rail service to his or her layout operations. The author, Jeff Wilson, is an experienced author in this business with over thirty books on railroads and model railroading to his credit. He also spent ten years as an associate editor at Model Railroader Magazine. When he isn't writing, he works as a freelance writer, editor and photographer -- and continues to contribute articles to magazines.

CONTENTS:
- Chapter 1. History of express, merchandise and mail service.
- Chapter 2. Railroad LCL traffic.
- Chapter 3. Railway Express Agency.
- Chapter 4. Head-end cars and merchandise equipment.
- Chapter 5. Depots, freight houses and transfer terminals.
- Chapter 6. Train and car operations.
- Chapter 7. Moving mail by rail.
- Bibliography