Railroaders' Nostalgia > Interesting Errors in Railroad Books

Does anybody else have "The History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe" edited by Pamela Berkman, published in 1988?  On page 56 there are pictures of the engineer's and fireman's stations "on a huge steam loco."  The problem is that the backs of the chairs are against the backhead!  I'm guessing that the photos are actually of an SP cab forward from the 1930's. (We have the last SP cab forward at the Calif. RR Museum and the inside of the cab looks older than ours.)

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Only Santa Fe reference is to a picture of a stock car.

I realize that.  But... it's a book about the Sante Fe RR and I think the photos are of an SP cab forward and the Santa Fe never used cab forwards.  It looks to me like they were sloppy and just grabbed two photographs from somewhere without realizing that they were of a unique locomotive to the Espee.

Railroadbill, I suspect you're right.  I'm not really surprised, sloppiness in journalism is rampant and not just confined to newspoaper reporters whose articles about derailments misrepresent the basics of railroading.  I've found similar misprepresentations even in the works of some of our most revered railroad authors.

A few decades ago, I noticed a photo in Lucius Beebe's "The Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads" with a caption describing the scene as the inside of the train order office at Duncan's Mills on the Northwestern Pacific  The picture was credited to H. Reid, who was a well-known (at the time) railroad photographer in the southeast, based in Virgina.  Then I noticed that in the background of that photo, there was an N&W calendar on the wall.  What do you think the chances are that this was really a picture of Duncan's Mills?

D F W

Beebe was notorious for making mistakes.

Frisco1522 Wrote:
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> Beebe was notorious for making mistakes.

After a heavy night of abiding, anything was possible
 

Frisco1522 Wrote:
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> Beebe was notorious for making mistakes.

Beebe didn't make mistakes, he just never let facts get in the way of a good yarn.

I have found that I just enjoy the picture for what it is, but do not put alot of faith in the caption!
I have found too many caption errors for things that I knew about so that made me suspect of
the things that I didn't.
zr190

So much for today's researching and fact checking. I can think of at least one current author out there where incorrect facts seem to be the order of the day in every book.