(Reviewed by Bill Jewett)  A valuable and remarkable resource has become available for model operators interested in information for offline traffic waybilling as well as online industry location, naming and design.  Tom Gloger, of Wheeling IL, has created Tom's Register 1938 (I love the name), a compendium of well over 2600 company listings as of 1938 or so, with their location, products, serving railroad, and often fascinating notes and comments.  For example, for the Washington Co-op Egg & Poultry Assn. of Winlock WA we learn that "there is a large, white-painted egg displayed near the depot."  Fisher Corp. in Flint MI is one of the "largest body-building plants in the world.  Parts are carried across the street to an assembly plant by an overhead conveyor."  Also interspersed are factoids such as, "By the 1940s, most of the Yellow Cab Company's nationwide fleet consisted of DeSoto sedans and limosines."

Commodities covered range from Abrasives to Zinc Products, not to mention Continous Leather Belting and "Studebakers to rutabegas."  The quality 250-page 8 1/2 x 11" volume is a fun time machine and trip down memory lane, whether you're an old-timer (I was two years old in 1938) or just a young-at-heart 1930s, 40s or 50s modeler.

The compendium, apparently an interesting sideline that totally ran away with Gloger, comes from the state guidebooks compiled by the WPA, supplemented by other sources.  In addition to the bibliography, itself worth the price to serious researchers, the volume includes data such as 1930s public works projects, US agricultural belts, industry process notes, 1930s signature items, glossary, weights & measures, railroad name changes... it goes on.