BOOK SIGNINGS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(For more information, contact Randy Baumgardner at (573) 472-9800)

Mount Vernon resident pens memoir about adventures on the railroad

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in the cab of a diesel locomotive, going down the tracks at 50 miles per hour and pulling over 100 rail cars?

Most of us can only fantasize about that experience. For Mount Vernon, IL resident Lee Cooper, it was a career.

Cooper has authored a memoir about his railroading career, which spanned over 40 years and included roles as a brakeman, conductor and fireman before becoming an engineer with Illinois Central Railroad. He logged over 12,000 trips totaling an estimated three million miles. The 5” by 8” paperback book is titled, “Tales from the Tracks—Memories of My Life on the Railroad.

Cooper will be talking about the book and his railroad career (date) at (time) at (location, including address). Copies will be available for purchase ($19.95) at the event, and he will take questions about railroading and his career after a few brief remarks.

The first-time author said he got the idea for writing the book from family.

“When I got around family I would talk a lot about railroading. The relatives said, ‘Why don’t you write a book about it?’ I thought about it for a while, then one day I thought, why not?”

Writing the book was not an overnight process for Cooper. “Over a period of five years, I wrote a chapter here, a chapter there.”

When his draft of the book was finished, he enlisted the help of friends to polish and edit the 120-page volume, which is published by Acclaim Press of Sikeston, MO.

“Tales from the Tracks” consists largely of first-person accounts of experiences he had on the railroad. Of the roughly 12,000 runs he made, the vast majority were routine. But on occasion, there were surprises. “There were close calls,” Cooper writes in the book’s introduction. “There were also tragedies.”

The author says that those close calls and tragedies “remain in my mind as clearly today as they were the day after they happened, even though they were decades ago.”

One feature of the book that the author thinks readers will really enjoy is a glossary of railroading terms. Cooper’s first-person narrative includes extensive dialogue between engineer, brakeman, conductor and dispatcher. The glossary lets readers learn the meaning of railroading lingo and have a better understanding of what is happening in the story.

“I really think that it (glossary) makes the book a little more interesting,” Cooper said. “It puts the reader in the cab with me.”

For those who are unable to attend the signing event, “Tales from the Tracks—Memories of My Life on the Railroad” can be purchased at the website highballhogger.com and at the publisher’s website, www.acclaimpress.com.