Historic North American Locomotives from Kalmbach is a museum-quality book that traces the development of North American locomotives from the early 1800s to the present. The collection presents 100 locomotives that are rarely shown together in the same book. Included are detailed and colored photographs created through painterly techniques. Covers a wide variety historic North American locomotives, from the 1805 Trevithick to the high-speed 2013 GE Genesis. This is the softcover version of the book, and contains 232 pages.

In this book noted model railroad author Tony Koester explains how steam, diesel, and electric servicing facilities work, with details on the processes and equipment that can be replicated on model railroad layouts. The author also includes an overview of locomotive maintenance, model railroad track plans, and modeling examples of locomotive servicing terminals plus prototype photos of servicing terminals, roundhouses, turntables, sand houses, towers, and more. The book has 96 pages and includes 180 color photos.