Ian Cook
Autore di Redhead
Sull'Autore
Ian Cook is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Murdoch University.
Opere di Ian Cook
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Sesso
- male
Utenti
Recensioni
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 15
- Opere correlate
- 2
- Utenti
- 93
- Popolarità
- #200,859
- Voto
- 3.6
- Recensioni
- 2
- ISBN
- 13
- Lingue
- 1
The author makes a point of telling us that he never had any ambition to write a book until he went into COVID lockdown in February 2021. Less than a year later, he has written seven. It shows. The text is nothing more than his trip notes, slightly expanded to make a narrative out of a list of numbers. It hasn't been subjected to any editing or spell checking, and there is a lack of consistency in the presentation of names, Austrian railway terms and sometimes engine numbers.
It is provided with plenty of photographs. Many of these are platform-side views of the train the author has either just travelled on or is about to travel on; so many of them look alike. There are exceptions: some of the views of the old Vienna Südbahnhof jogged my memory a lot, and there are some instances of photographs that give evidence of unusual workings, such as centre-cab electrics of classes 1063 or 1163, usually restricted to freight trains, on passenger turns instead of merely shunting coaches as station pilots.
However, the propensity of Austrian railwaymen to believe that anything can be coupled to anything else is barely seen in these pictures, which for me is one of the attractions of Austrian railways! And just to add to the problems, the book is printed on demand by Amazon, and their handling of images leaves a a lot to be desired. The combination of their software and the grade of paper the book is printed on results in most of the photographs having a soft focus effect and many of the reds rendered into a fluorescent shade (the cover, being on different paper stock and most likely done through a different process, does not suffer this problem).
The author's account of his journeys shows up the limitations of the spotter's mindset. He spends time on the highly scenic narrow gauge Mariazellerbahn, but does not travel beyond Ober Grafendorf until his third visit, when his wife accompanied him for the first time. The scenic beauty of the MZB only starts after Ober Grafendorf! And he expresses surprise and some little indignation when he is thrown off a couple of special trains for not actually having booked a ticket!
This book will not tell the reader much about exploring Austria by rail that will be of any use. It is for completists only.… (altro)