Emmett Watson provides a dramatic cover for this issue of RAILROAD STORIES. Inside are stories by E.S. Dellinger, the star author of RAILROAD STORIES, as well as John A. Thompson (who wrote as The Engine Picture Kid), Earle Davis, and Searle B. Faires, who got the cover story. Faires is a mystery to me. He published half a dozen stories in 1933-35, all of them in RAILROAD STORIES, and that's the extent of his career. I'm always curious about writers like that who appear to be on the verge of success but then disappear. It's possible that he died, of course, or just stopped writing for some other reason. But the mystery always intrigues me.
I find the cover on this issue of WEST interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, the guy reminds me of Alfred E. Neuman of MAD MAGAZINE fame. Secondly, compare this cover to the cover from the January 1951 issue of MAMMOTH WESTERN painted by Robert Gibson Jones (below). It's not a direct swipe, but when I saw this WEST cover, I was reminded immediately of the MAMMOTH WESTERN cover. Had Jones seen the earlier cover and remembered it? Pure coincidence? I have no way of knowing, of course, but I find the similarity interesting. I'm sure the stories in this issue of WEST are pretty interesting, too. The authors on hand are all prolific pulpsters: Larry Harris, Dean Owen, Bill Gulick, Kenneth Fowler, and John A. Thompson. I met Gulick a couple of times. He continued writing and publishing into the 1990s, far past the end of the pulp era.
