Best products from r/trains

While it's not the most scholastic source (the owner sometimes writes subjective things on objective topics), AmericanRails is probably the most comprehensive easy-to-navigate free site and is a great way to learn about general North American rail history for free. Wikipedia is hit-or-miss as always, with some very comprehensive articles and some that are just a few lines and a picture, but the fact that it's free makes it worth a look.

You mention the east coast, do you mean the Northeast Corridor specifically or the entire coast? If you mean the NEC, the line was operated for most of its history by the New Haven RR and the Pennsylvania RR, which would later both become Penn Central before Amtrak took over operations of the NEC. If you mean the entire coast, I'll need another comment for that.

Unfortunately this hobby's best information about historic railroading is almost entirely book-based, so to get everything you'll have to invest in some books. Anything by Kalmbach will be accurate, comprehensive, and hopefully not too hard to read, this is a good historical summary. I have this book, and I think it's a good summary; the language isn't difficult and there's plenty of pictures. I've seen people recommend this one, it's less of a history book and more of an encyclopedia of nearly every major North American railroad. These books cover general topics; there's been scores of books written about every railroad that exists/existed. If you can help refine the location/area, we can try to find more specific information.

The seemingly paradoxical characteristics of flexibility and strength are pretty impressive.

Rail used to come in 45 foot lengths that were bolted together. Those bolts come loose periodically and need to be tightened. Railroads used to have section gangs spaced regularly along the mainline to patrol and maintain the tracks. Those gangs made up a very large workforce that often lived in micro communities in the middle of nowhere that were made up entirely of railroad workers and their families.

Nowadays, rail is imported in 90’ sticks that are welded together into quarter-mile lengths. Those quarter-mile lengths of rail are distributed by special trains then welded together on site. That’s called continuously welded rail (CWR) and represents a major breakthrough for the railroads. There is much less maintenance required, which means a much smaller maintenance of way workforce. CWR saves railroads money through both lower costs and improved reliability.

I can’t recommend any YouTube channels, but I can recommend the book The Railroad: What It Is And What It Does. It’s an excellent book that explains, in detail, almost every aspect of railroad operations.

Edit: fixed link

Locomotives: The Modern Diesel and Electric Reference
This one has a good history on the progression of modern Diesel locomotives in North America.

The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does
Borrowed this one from a co-worker many years ago. Pretty sure it had quite a bit of engineering related details.

The Baofeng UV-5R blows everything else out of the water at its price point of $24: https://smile.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-Radio-Black/dp/B007H4VT7A

You might want a different antenna, but otherwise it works great. Splurge for the programming cable if you don't want to manually dial in frequencies, but it's not totally necessary. Not sure if it would work for police scanning or not, but should be easy enough to check. I doubt it, though.

I have a book that I think you'll really enjoy. it the Model Railroader Steam locomotives cyclopedia- vol1 edited by Lynn H. Westcott. This book not only diagrams entire steam locomotives and explains how each part works but it also contains pictures and blueprints of almost every american made steam locomotive produced or prototyped. This book includes locomotives from Penncy, UP, Southern Pacific, Norfolk Southern, Reading, NYC, Northern Pacific and more. Here is an amazon link to an example of the book just to show you what it looks like.
http://www.amazon.com/Model-Railroader-Cyclopedia-Vol-Locomotives/dp/0890240019

so typically you'd go by number of axles, nose style, and fan and radiator position and size. however, even within a single model there can be a lot of variation because every locomotive is custom-made to some degree for the customers.

for example, these are all SD70s, but they look pretty drastically different.

this book gets into a lot of the nitty gritty of trainspotting. published in 2015 so should still encompass at least 95% of currently operating equipment.

This man wrote some very fine books. I had this in the 70's as a kid growing up. I read it a lot...

His name was OS Nock. he was a railwayman in England. Any of his books would be a good start or addition to any collection.

https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopaedia-Railways-S-Nock/dp/0706406044

Saw this trailer for the Best of British Transport Films: 70th Anniversary Movie on Amazon

This is a great read https://www.amazon.com/American-Steam-Locomotives-Development-1880-1960/dp/0253039339

When I was at the London Underground museum in the UK I picked up a copy of "The Subterranean Railway' by Christian Wolmar. It does a great job of discussing the early history of the London Underground system. Decent writing if a bit dry. I haven't seen it in print in the U.S., but Amazon has a kindle edition here:

http://www.amazon.com/Subterranean-Railway-Underground-Changed-Forever-ebook/dp/B00PF1H7SC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420515083&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Subterranean+Railway

I could have sworn I’ve seen it there..

Here is an Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Scotsman-Memorabilla-Set-available/dp/B008VV4YGG/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=flying+scotsman+on+tour&qid=1572314746&sr=8-2. Includes the USA tour and a few other Scotsman DVDs (not sure if its the same you saw)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/027102741X?pc_redir=1414103908&robot_redir=1
I'm doing this from mobile so hopefully the link works. And the book is non fiction this is a real account of what life was like from 1904-1949

This is the particular one I have. They're quite fun if you're frequently bored.

There, i've dug into my amazon wishbox, and...

https://www.amazon.com/American-Steam-Locomotives-Brian-Solomon/dp/0760303363

https://www.amazon.com/Steam-Locomotive-Works-Karen-Parker/dp/0939487896

I have a copy of this book signed by the author.

Probably not what you are looking for, but available on VHS:
http://www.amazon.com/Trains-Unlimited-History-Channel-Documentary/dp/B000006QV8