This is the 4th version of Foster's Treatise, as once known to civil engineers. This is the premier professional reference on late 19th and early 20th century North American railroad practice, in the design and construction of minor bridges. While the original 1891 edition necessarily focused on 1870's and 1880's practice, this greatly enlarged version of 1913 expands on most recent developments in wooden railroad trestle design and construction, and extends to the then rapidly developing field of reinforced concrete trestle work. Once an essential volume in any railroad bridge engineer's library, it is now equally valuable to the student and historian interested in railroad bridge practice.

Part 1 is a through discussion of all aspects of trestle design and construction. Part 2 gives 76 example designs, as dimensioned engineering drawings, most extracted from the several preceding decades' engineering publications. Fortunately there were no folded plates for Google to miss-copy, so it seems that all examples are retained. Part 3 is a 34 page bibliography referencing most of the relevant preceding engineering literature.

As a fairly raw copy, this one needs enlargement to the original quarto size to be easily read. Which is part of its value, since the photographs and drawings have not suffered the disastrous depredations of clean-up-bots optimized solely for recovery of text.