As A Railroad Historian
Following the sale of his wargame company, Avalon Hill, Charles Roberts held various positions in the publishing industry. In 1973, he founded a small press, Barnard, Roberts, and Company, which he has described as "publishing to the Catholic market," even though Roberts himself is non-Catholic. Over time, the company's emphasis shifted away from religious publications and toward railroad history.
Roberts took pride in coming from a long line of railroaders. One of his great great uncles was Thomas Swann, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from 1848 to 1853. Roberts' father and grandfather (also named Charles Swann Roberts) had long careers with the Baltimore and Ohio. In one of his books, Roberts reminisced about childhood trips with his father to observe the operations of the Pennsylvania Railroad, of which Roberts had always been an enthusiast.
The books currently offered by Barnard, Roberts, and Company are about railroad history, principally, but not entirely, authored by Charles Roberts himself. Earlier volumes focused on the Baltimore and Ohio, and more recently, a series of books have covered the Pennsylvania Railroad. The first in this series was Triumph I: Altoona to Pitcairn: 1846-1996, and the most recent is Triumph IX: Salt Sea to Bays, Valleys, Dells, and Firestorms: 1927-2007.
Read more about this topic: Charles S. Roberts
Famous quotes containing the words railroad and/or historian:
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)