Santa Fe to the Bay: Growing Up on the West End of the Valley Division Second District

Santa Fe Railway Historical and Modeling Society, softcover, 144 pages, 60 B&W and 188 Color photographs, 24 maps, timetable and operating ephemera.

At first glance, this is an album of the photography of the late Gerry Salsig. But is more than that. It is a labor of love, written by a friend who grew up with the photographer - a testimony of an eye witness and his friends as they made a journey typical of that made by many of us who, while growing up, became fascinated with the railroad known as The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe.

Not only does this book describe the innocence of several friends from the East Bay area of San Francisco as they began to explore their railroad world and experience the sights, sounds and people connected with it, but the author, Patrick D. Flynn - who later became a dispatcher employed by the Santa Fe - adds considerable depth from an insider's point of view as to how Santa Fe operated the west end of the Second District of the Valley Division.

This division was operated under time table and train-orders over a three-decade period beginning in the mid-1960s and on into the mid-1980s.