Slick transport

Some books about streamline trains.

Reed's book was one of the first to take a backward look at streamline transport. Originally published in 1975, the same year as Donald Bush's The Streamlined Decade and in 1979 Jeffrey Meikle's book Twentieth century limited: Industrial design in America, 1925-1939 (American civilization) defined the style and I think became the standard reference books on the subject. Bush and Meikle look beyond transport to cover architecture and consumer products in a much more scholarly way than Reed and their books are much more professionally produced.

Transport in the thirties was an obvious choice for streamlining, though it's worth pointing out that the wonderfully looking sleek steamers were just the same old engine covered by a designed shroud. It wasn't until diesels were developed to finally have a completely streamlined product. Most of Reed's book looks at trains, particularly steam ones and he clearly has done a lot of research. The first chapters consider the history and then development of streamline trains in the twenties and early thirties. All the famous trains in the thirties and forties get extensive coverage in words and photos.

A chapter I found interesting was 'Streamline abroad', which looks at trains around the world. Because streamline is defined as essentially an American style the engines from elsewhere all look as if they are missing something. They look cumbersome and really lacking in pizzazz. There just weren't designers like Loewy, Dreyfuss, Kuhler, Bell Geddes in other countries. The last part of the book covers aircraft, road transport and the decline of streamline passenger trains after 1945. Aircraft seem the least likely form of transport to need streamlining; by their nature they are sleek and aerodynamically efficient. Oddly Reed doesn't cover ships (least not in my 1975 edition). Bush's 'Streamline decade' has eleven pages on this.

The streamline era is really a comprehensive text coverage of trains of the period but I thought it's a pity the book looks so amateurish. This is typical of the transport press, especially trains, there is the needless duplication of photos. Pages 199, 200 and 2001 have six photos of the Loewy designed Pennsylvania's T-1. Two photos, much larger, would have been enough for the reader. This waste of page space with photo repetition runs all through the book. The pages have no particular design, interesting photos are too small and many could well have been left out. The typography from the title page onwards is bland and was it really necessary to have a different heading type for each different named train?

The book is now more than three decades old and looks it and though it was perhaps the first to look in depth at the subject I really can't see why it should be so expensive. There are now similar streamline train books in color and better looking. Worth checking out are: The Art of the Streamliner or Classic American Streamliners and these, which despite rather unimaginative presentations have plenty of interesting images, the two-volume 'The American streamliner' by Heimburger and Byron (ISBN 0911581391 and 091158143X). Mark Wegman's stunning art of many of the trains in Reed's book can be found in his American Passenger Trains and Locomotives Illustrated (Great Passenger Trains).