Library Card

A couple weeks ago I commented that I like model railroads, and in my past I had magazine subscriptions and went to the library for information on my railroading hobby. Since I'm not ready to start building a new train layout just yet as I have no plan just yet, I thought I'd see what my local public library had in the book stacks to inspire me.

A little of my library history is that I worked at one of the nations best... The Denver Public Library. One of my first jobs was as a shelver for the DPL, and there were many of us working multiple shifts. Hundreds of people were in and out of the DPL on a daily basis, and the book repository loaned many of it's books to other libraries in a process called interlibrary loan. I knew my way around the books!

So my visit to the Cambridge library is a somewhat different experience. At the DPL, you had to go searching for someone to help if you couldn't find what you wanted. In Cambridge the librarian asks what you are looking for, and off she goes!

What the librarian came up with for my request for model railroading information was what surprised me most. "The Boy's Book Of Model Trains" with a publishing date of 1951 was the only reference available on the shelves. Things have changed a bit in the model world since 1951 to be sure, but the library at least has some information. Only problem darn it... that was the same book my Dad got me way back when I was a kid. It made for a nice trip down memory lane though so there is more than information available at the local library.