Kevin J. Holland’s “VIA In Color - The first 25 years: 1976-2001”.

Kevin J. Holland’s “VIA In Color The first 25 years: 1976-2001” is a much welcomed addition to the spate of books which have been written on the subject of VIA Rail in the past few years. It follows the Morning Sun Books tradition of 100% colour shots and photos from a wide variety of photographers covering all of Canada, though there is a preponderance of shots from Ontario. While the book says the period covered is 1976-2001, most of the books content is from VIA”s first 10-15 years, and there is nothing wrong with that, as after the cuts of 1990 VIA Rail became a much more boring railroad to photograph from a railfan’s perspective. A particularly interesting part of the book is the spreads on pages 8-9 and 10-11 which shows the evolution of VIA’s liveries on both passenger cars and motive power. The only slight criticism I have of the book is that there seems to be just a bit too much shots from southern Ontario. But even those shots are very interesting. This books provides a very thorough and well detailed look at VIA’s first 25 years and is highly recommended.

COMING NEXT MONTH:

Next Month Michael will review Jim Shaughnessy’s “The Call of Trains - Railroad Photography by Jim Shaughnessy”.

NEW BOOK: If you have a fascination with Newfoundland, then the book by Ken Pieroway "RAILS ACROSS THE ROCK" maybe of interest. It is an all colour 183 paged hadrcover in lansdscape format. Ken has collected images of the Newfoundland Railway and CN after 1949 from an impressive group of photographers, and then has matched the locations of their photos which show how nature has transformed the same location. Captions are very informative. A good one for those who love the Rock. Details are found at Creative Book Publishers: nl.books@transcontinental.ca
Don McQueen

© CRO October 2013