We at Railway Station Press are hard at work on our second deck of poker sized playing cards. The Kickstarter can be seen HERE.

Above is the Tuck Box for the deck. This is a collaboration between Stuart Bradley, publisher of Railway Station Press, and his sister Artist Jean Bradley. Jean has been painting a series of portraits of American Indians. She has painted over half of the paintings we need to complete this deck of original artwork. Here are some examples of cards:

This is the Queen of Spades card.

This is the six of Diamonds card.

We have a new Kickstarter here that lasts until April 15th. We are trying to raise money to have the 1893 Chicago Midway Playing Cards professionally printed in poker size with rounded corners and custom printed tuck boxes. We are offering some of the limited edition letterpress printed playing cards and history cards.

The companion book will be in color in a 7.5 by 7.5 inch format. It will reproduce the letterpress printed playing cards and the history deck of the Midway. There will also be historic photographs, maps, and additional information about the Midway of the famous 1893 Chicago World’s Fair also known as the Columbian Exposition.

The society dedicated to the collecting of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair memorabilia and historical research has posted a superb write-up of this Kickstarter HERE. They have posted pictures of the BB&S foundry, the newspaper use of these character ornaments, and other background information. Thank you Scott Cummings and Randy Hercey!

Here is the tuck box that the playing cards will come in. The cards have been ordered and will be available mid-April.

Now a Kickstarter HERE. There will only be one hundred copies printed. They will be signed and numbered. The Kickstarter ends on April 4th.

We are offering a collectors guide to Mouse Books and the Mouse Book Club LLC of Chicago, Illinois. They have published 47 of these pocket size (3.5 by 5.5 inch) books in the last three years. Railway Station Press is independent from the Mouse Book Club.

Each of the 47 books gets one page in the catalog with the cover reproduced in color, a numbering system devised by Railway Station Press, information about availability, and a description of the book’s contents. Many of these limited edition Mouse Books have already been sold out, so they are highly collectible.

One could only look at the success of Field Notes to see where the Mouse Book Club is headed in the future. The early books will become hard to find! Their first book, the First Edition of “The Dead” by James Joyce, featured on the cover of this catalog, was printed in a limited, numbered edition of 500 and is sold out.

This $15 collectors catalog is 58 pages in color, 5.5 by 8.5 inches, and can be pre-ordered, or you can pledge on Kickstarter. This book will be limited to one hundred, numbered and signed copies.

Here is the cover of the Mouse Book Collector: 2020 Edition available in April.

Our new book is 42 pages and in color. It reproduces two letterpress booklets showing numerous ampersands and has a detailed history of Railway Station Press. It sells for $10 plus $4 shipping to U.S. addresses.

Due to the hard work of our Paris translator, Alexandre Mallet, we have a version of this book in French. It is four pages longer than the English version as it takes more words to express the concepts in French. The price is $10 with $4 shipping in the United States, $10 to Canada, and $15 to the rest of the world.

The sequel to the American Art Stamp Album is the French Art Stamp Album. It is 136 pages with the biographies of 32 French Artists and a tribute to Vincent Van Gogh. The Special Limited Edition contains all 34 stamps, carefully mounted in the book by the author. Of the edition of one hundred, as of this writing, 25 copies are still available at $45 each with $5 shipping in the United States. There is a limit of two books per person. Shipping to Canada is $18 and to the rest of the world $24.

We offer a Basic Stamp Album version which contains the first and last stamps but the other 32 you have to obtain yourself. It is 136 pages and is $18 plus $5 shipping. Here is the cover.

The Basic Stamp Album is now available for purchase. It sells for $18 with $4 first class shipping in the US, $18 for Canada, and $24 for the rest of the world. The book contains the first three stamps and it is up to you to find the other 38 stamps to complete the album. These books are spiral bound so that you can lay the book flat while you work on your stamp album. Go to Books for Sale page for more details.

Wayne Youngblood has written an excellent review of this stamp album which appears on pages 63 and 64 of the March/April 2019 issue of Topical Time, the magazine of the American Topical Association.

Here are the seven books that Railway Station Press has published from July  2017 to now. They are available for sale at Books for Sale.

Founders Club memberships are still available for $100 which covers five years from 2017 to 2021.  Go HERE.

The Photo History of the Black 95th General Service Regiment in World War II in two volumes is available for $20 postpaid in the United States and $10 additional for postage to foreign countries.  Please make your check payable to “Railway Station Press” at P O Box 2327, Alexandria, VA 22301 or pay by PayPal at “stuartbradley@comcast.net”.  Updated on February 21, 2018

I am now transcribing my father’s letters and preparing the first volume of his letters, “Letters From the Alcan Highway by Captain Stuart V. Bradley” using excerpts of 150 letters he wrote my mother during 1942 and 1943 in British Columbia while the 95th was building the Alcan (Alaska) Highway.

Update: An excellent history of the Black 93rd Engineer Regiment, which built the part of the Alcan Highway in the Yukon Territory, has been written by Christine & Dennis McClure called “We Fought the Road” just published in October. I am enjoying the book very much. It can be found HERE at their website.