Over the years I've accumulated a collection of print and digital TP&W reference materials that have educated me about the railroad and have been invaluable to my modeling. This blog post will be an annotated bibliography of sorts for the printed materials. I think I have most of the books and articles that have been published about the TP&W, and I thought it might be useful to list them all in one place.
Books About the TP&W
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| The Peoria Way by Joe McMillan and Robert P. Olmsted (1984) was, to my knowledge, the first book published about the TP&W. Text in this book is limited to the captions of many black-and-white photos, most of which are from the early 1980s. |
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| Toledo, Peoria & Western, Tried, Proven & Willing by Paul H. Stringham (1993) was the first book I got about the TP&W. This book is mostly text and covers the history of the railroad from the 1850s through the early 1990s. Appendices include things such as steam and diesel locomotive rosters, a caboose roster, a corporate chronology, and a 1931 timetable. This book has a wealth of information though there are some errors, most notably that the text says the 1970 Crescent City explosion happened instead at Weston. |
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| Toledo, Peoria & Western Railroad In Color by Roger Kujawa, J. David Ingles, and David P. Jordan (2007) contains an excellent collection of TP&W color photography. The first few pages of the book provide a nice history of the TP&W from the beginning through the early 2000s, and the rest of the book is photos annotated with informative captions. There is a section at the end devoted to photos of freight cars and cabooses that has been very helpful to my recent modeling efforts. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the TP&W. |
Books That Feature the TP&W
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| There are multi-page sections of color TP&W photos in both of the Central Illinois Rails books by J. David Ingles and Richard R. Wallin. |
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| Trackside Around Peoria with Ed Johnson, 1963-1980 also contains a section about the TP&W. Most of the TP&W photos in this book, including the one on the cover, are from the 1960s. |
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| Here's a good example of judging a book by its cover. This book probably shouldn't even be on this list, but the cover photo of #700 is striking and convinced my child self that this book was worth buying. I remember being disappointed that there is only one TP&W photo inside the book. |
I don't have a copy of Regional Railroads of the Midwest by Steve Glischinski (2007), but this book also has a section about the TP&W. I have seen this book before, however, and I think I remember the TP&W section being mostly about the post-Santa Fe version of the railroad.
Magazines with Articles About the TP&W (Prototype-focused)
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| Railfan & Railroad magazine ran a great 3-part series about the TP&W in 1983-1984. Part 1 in the July 1983 issue covers the history of the railroad and also includes an interview with TP&W president Robert McMillan. |
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| Part 2 of the series in the September 1983 focuses on the history of the TP&W's locomotives. In my opinion, this is the best article about TP&W motive power and has details that I haven't seen printed anywhere else. |
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| Part 3 of the Railfan & Railroad series in the January 1984 issue is a brief article about the Prairie Marksman, Amtrak's short-lived Peoria to Chicago train that ran on the TP&W from East Peoria to Chenoa. |
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| The May-June 1974 issue of Extra 2200 South has an article about the TP&W diesel locomotive roster. This article pre-dates the TP&W's GP38-2s, which didn't start arriving until 1977. |
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| The November/December 2005 issue of Diesel Era has another article about the TP&W's diesel locomotives. I don't remember where I found many of the magazines featured in this blog post, but I do remember buying this one at a hobby shop in Canada. Not much competition for TP&W stuff up there, eh. |
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| Yet another article about the TP&W's locomotive roster was published in the September 1986 issue of Prototype Modeler, a relatively short-lived model railroading magazine. |
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| The March 1967 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman has an article by Jim Boyd about the TP&W. Most magazine articles about the pre-Santa Fe TP&W were either published around the time of the merger or after the fact, so this article stands out for its perspective during a time when business was booming on the Tip-Up. |
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| Classic Trains magazine has a regular "Fallen Flags" feature, and the TP&W made its appearance in the Winter 2011 issue. This one is recent enough that I actually bought it new. |
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| The 1990s-era TP&W is the cover story of the October 1998 issue of RailNews (formerly Pacific Rail News). |
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| The most obscure publication featured in this blog post is this one, Midwestern Rails. This apparently was a newsletter-style publication that existed in the late 1970s - early 1980s. The two issues in my collection don't have articles about the TP&W, but the back cover pictured above shows a few TP&W features in other issues. I bought my issues of Midwestern Rails at a train show in Minnesota several years ago and remarked to the vendor that I had never seen this publication before. He said that I would probably never see it again, and so far he's been right. |
I don't have a copy, but I am aware that the March 1997 issue of Trains magazine has an article about the 1990s-era TP&W.
The now-defunct
Model Railroading magazine once ran a series of prototype information articles about EMD GP40s, and TP&W #1000 got a mention in the
March 2002 issue.
Magazines with TP&W Modeling Articles
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| Modeling articles about the TP&W are few and far between. To my knowledge, Kevin Piper's article about detailing and painting HO scale TP&W GP38-2s in the September 1989 issue of Model Railroader is the only step-by-step article about modeling a TP&W prototype. |
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| The November 1986 issue of Mainline Modeler has a short article about the green and yellow paint scheme as applied to the road's ALCo RS-11s and includes a scale drawing of one of these locomotives. I have found references to a TP&W article in the February 2000 issue of Mainline Modeler, but I don't have that issue and don't know what the article is about. |
Model Railroading magazine ran a regular "Diesel Detail Close-up" feature that provided a bill of materials (detail parts, paint, decals, etc.) for a superdetailed model of the subject locomotive. TP&W locomotives were the subject of at least 3 articles in this series. Scans of these articles can be viewed online at Trainlife.com at the links below:
Other References
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| Pictured above are copies of the 1971 and 1972 TP&W Annual Reports. My parents found these in their basement, apparently left behind by a previous owner of the house who was a TP&W shareholder. |
Things I Wish I Had
I am a member of the reformed
TP&W Historical Society, which publishes a semi-annual newsletter. I am aware that the original incarnation of the TP&W Historical Society also published a newsletter called the
Prairie Marksman in the 1980s-1990s, but
I have never seen an issue of this publication. Historical society publications are often great sources of information, so I would be very interested in any old issues of the
Prairie Marksman.
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