The Hiawatha Story
Loved for their radically new, streamlined look, the Hiawatha's Art Deco engines were a hallmark of American industrial design. For Midwestern passengers from Chicago to Aberdeen, the Hiawatha represented speed, comfort, and luxury. From 1935 to 1970 it carried countless passengers and even more memories. Richly illustrated, The Hiawatha Story brings the design and history of this beloved rail fleet to life.
Lovers of locomotive lore—climb aboard Jim Scribbins’s tribute to trains. This reviewer has never had the pleasure of travel by train and Mr. Scribbins’s book reminds me of what marvelous adventures I have missed.
The Daily News
First there was a single experimental coach, then an entire fleet. Soon Hiawatha was a railway legend. Loved for their radically new, streamlined look, the Hiawatha’s Art Deco engines were a hallmark of American industrial design—a genre of passenger cars from Tip Top Tap to Touralux to the glass-encased Skytop. For Midwestern passengers from Chicago to Aberdeen, the Hiawatha represented speed, comfort, and luxury, offering spectacular views of the rolling landscape. From 1935 to 1970 it carried countless passengers and even more memories. Richly illustrated with more than 350 photographs, The Hiawatha Story brings the design and history of this beloved rail fleet to life.
Lovers of locomotive lore—climb aboard Jim Scribbins’s tribute to trains. This reviewer has never had the pleasure of travel by train and Mr. Scribbins’s book reminds me of what marvelous adventures I have missed.
The Daily News
A fine pictorial history of a train dear to the hearts of many Midwesterners.
Minneapolis Star
In this carefully researched and well-documented book, Scribbins chronicles the history of the Hiawatha since the first one departed from Chicago to the Twin Cities in the spring of 1935.
Chicago Today
Scribbins has captured the story of the Hiawatha in this handsome book of innumerable superb photos.
Stanford-Times
Railroad buffs will get speechless, recognizing rare photos and not recognizing many never seen before. It’s all a matter of taste and nostalgia and damn good research by a guy who loves the Hiawatha line.
Gloucester Daily Times
Profusely illustrated with historic black-and-white photography, The Hiawatha Story by railroading enthusiast Jim Scribbins provides other railroading fans with an impressively informative pictorial history of the Midwestern railroad that ran from Chicago, Illinois to the Twin Cities of Minnesota. A work of seminal scholarship and very highly recommended for academic library Railroading History reference collection, as well as engaging and entertaining reading for railroading enthusiasts, Jim Scribbins’s The Hiawatha Story is an informed and informative account of those golden yesteryears of a truly great American fleet and system.
Midwest Book Review
This reprint is just as comprehensive and worthy of any railroad library’s bookshelf as the original.
Trains
This richly-illustrated book by a lifetime employee of the Milwaukee Road showcases a hallmark of American industrial design—the Hiawatha’s sleek Art Deco engines. Author Scribbins describes the complete story of how the streamlined craze of the 1930s was translated by the Milwaukee Road into this classic train that represented speed, comfort and luxury to thousands of Midwestern riders.
S Gaugian
The Hiawatha Story is an entertaining thorough work, and it’s nice to see it in print again.
Classic Trains
High melodrama and florid prose mark this telling originally published in 1929.
Minnesota Trains
