Softcover, 100 pages, 8.5 x 10 in., 90 color illustrations.
The photographs in this title are one per page and therefore, there is great detail to be seen. There are pictures of steam from the various roads entering Council Bluffs and as this is a steam to diesel transition era book, many pictures of first-generation diesels when the paint was fresh. There is a picture of an EMD demonstrator F7A beside the old Rock Island roundhouse. Also, there is a neat picture of Rock Island motorcar 9071 on the turntable. There are some pictures of cabooses, work cars, and depots. A picture of the derelict Chicago Great Western freight house is included. This title has some really neat and uncommon pictures not found in other titles. Union Pacific has quite a few photographs here, but most of the book features the connecting railroads.
At its peak, Council Bluffs, Iowa, was served by eight major railroads, making it the fifth-largest rail center in the United States.
Trains of Council Bluffs and Omaha documents the dramatic impact that new technology had on the railroads serving these two Midwestern cities in the mid-20th century. It was a time when diesels replaced steam power, and streamlined passenger train travel reached its zenith. Railroad enthusiasts Carl Hehl and Art Zimmerla, who photographed the great transition, have the best of their color photography presented in this testimony to an era that forever changed an iconic American industry.
