Station to Station

This thoroughly readable, irresistible volume on railroad-station architecture is so inclusive that it even has a still from Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. Filled with such memorabilia, Station to Station is like a long, wonderful journey in which the stations themselves--our destinations--are simply the high points. There are early timetables, plans, and elevations for many of the most famous stations; antique baggage-claim checks; and sepia prints of ribbon-cutting ceremonies. The volume also includes such mementos as a shot of the Howrah Station in Calcutta, India, with the note that the architect "was well-known for English suburban housing," and painful-to-see photographs of New York's Pennsylvania Station--with "the largest and most monumental single room in the world today," as the grand, light-strewn space was advertised--before its remodeling.