A fun book, helped by the ?as told to? party (a woman, I believe), who wrote many books about horses and animals and edited 'The Boudoir Companion: Frivolous, Sometimes Venemous Thoughts on Men, Morals and Other Women' (1943, the same year as 'Clear the Tracks!'). Cooper knew how to turn a tale, and she turns each of Bromley?s chapters into short stories. This technique works best in the first 150 pages, when the author is working his way up from a boy who helps out around the roundhouse to a locomotive engineer. Once Bromley achieves the highest status, the steam leaves the narrative the way it leaves an unfired engine. Then 'Clear the Tracks!' becomes a series of events, some far afield from railroading (including cockfights ? particularly distasteful now ? and a trip to England to visit his family). The final chapter, in which Bromley becomes a safety inspector and travels the country in what must?ve been the oughts through the Depression, could?ve been a book all on its own.
