Re: how to learn about shopwork

Some stuff is being reprinted. Try your local model and engineering bookseller
One interesting book that has made it into reprint is "Modern Locomotive Construction" by JGA Meyers, It isn't particularly cheap at $45, but it covers a lot of stuff concerning the design and construction end. Another not so cheap ($40) book is "Laying out for Boilermakers" that covers sizing, and gives some pretty good practical how-tos.
One supplier that I occasionally use (Nation Builder Books) was in the process of reprinting some Pennsy shop maintenance stuff a few chapters at a time in paper booklet form, It had some so-so scans of neat pics, things like big lokeys in slings (must have been HUGE bridge cranes) being lowered onto their running gear, etc. Those were around $8 or $9 for a 50 page booklet.
Now, if you're more interested in learning how the shortlines did it, then almost any old farmer worth his salt can teach you the basic art of "yankee ingenuity", or "it'lldo", or "baling wire mechanics", or "half-a$$ing", or "(pick a racial slur)-rigging", or whatever you want to call it. My dad once defined it as "doing things the hard way with what you have on hand because you ain't got money to do it right". The funny thing is, many times those jury rigged repairs functioned as well as (or better than) the original.
Don't look for that kind of knowlege in a book tho, for a coupla reasons: First, it would probably get OSHA, and the FRA beating down the doors of a lot of still operating places, Second, a lot of the things sound like they would NEVER work, but they do., and 3rd, most of it is just carried around in these guy's heads, Pap (who we just lost this fall) was a great one for turning out project after project without any drawings or notes. The most he ever did was work out some sticky problem or complex shape with welding chalk on the garage floor, often he'd just sleep on it and have it all puzzled out by morning.... Not bad for someone with an 8th grade education, and there were once THOUSANDS of guys in this country just like him. (That's one of the unfortunate things we have REALLY lost so much of in our modern society, not the techniques themselves so much, but the ability to constantly think outside the box. To see the problem, then go root through the scrap heap, and be up and running in hours)