RIBBONS OF STEEL: THE STORY OF THE NORTHERN ALBERTA RAILWAYS Ena Schneider Calgary, Detselig, 1989. 312pp, paper, ISBN 0-920490-97-2 (cloth) $27.95, 0-920490-96-4 (paper) $18.95. CIP Grades 7 and up/Ages 12 and up Reviewed by Jack Brown. Volume 18 Number 1 1990 January This is the story of the Northern Alberta Railways, which networked the northern recesses of Alberta with 923 miles of track until 1981, when the company was absorbed by CN Rail. The author, a former employee of the railroad, interviewed over one thousand other ex-employees to weave a chronol­ogy of the NAR, and has done so by capturing the stories of the people who brought life to this special part of railway history. She has accomplished this with great success by interspersing anecdotes and photos (over two hundred) of the colourful men and women whose intense loyalty to the railroad shows through in their fond memories of the days of steam and diesel. This lends authenticity and credibility, making Ribbons of Steel a memoir of the communities as well as a general history of a major Canadian railway, once the third largest in the country. Ena Schneider divided her subject into boom years, lean years, depression years, war years and final years. She has augmented the double-column text with an excellent variety of historical photographs that will please railroad buffs with their detail and scope - pic­tures of trains, engines, bridges, stations, train wrecks, maintenance and adver­tisements. There is an excellent twenty-page section of author's notes and an equally extensive fourteen-page index, which facilitates easy use of the book as a reference source. Jack Brown, Kingston C.V.I., Kingston, Ont.