The cover of “The Old Railway Station Book” really caught my eye. This is the stone station at Kensington, PEI, a station I have visited several times. I was hooked.
This book by Michael Golay follows the train station from its humble beginnings at the dawn of railroading, through the heyday of train stations at the end of the 1800s and the start of the 1900s, through their decline to today.
I should point out right away that this is a North American train station book. There is no coverage of train stations outside of this continent, but I was pleasantly surprised to see significant coverage of Canadian stations beyond Kensington on the cover.
There are a lot of photographs in this book, mostly by the author, featuring railway stations in the United States and in Canada. They accompany a generous amount of text describing the evolution of train station architecture through the years.
I wouldn’t exactly call this a coffee table book. I also wouldn’t call it strictly a history book, either. It is somewhere in between… not quite scholarly but definitely not a photo book.
I liked reading it. If you like train stations, especially American ones, you’ll probably like this book.
I honestly don’t know where to buy it. It’s not listed on Amazon (the author’s Railroad Stations, Depots & Roundhouses book is) so perhaps you could find it in a used book store.