[PDF] American Passenger Trains eBook

Author : James McCommons
Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 50,58 MB
Release : 2009-11-06
Category : Travel
ISBN : 1603582592

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During the tumultuous year of 2008--when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records, and a commuter train collided with a freight train in California--journalist James McCommons spent a year on America's trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails throughout much of the Amtrak system. Organized around these rail journeys, Waiting on a Train is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism. Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible? Distrust of railroads in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads. While riding the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in America--and what role government should play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nation's stimulus program, he explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized in America.

Author : Mark Wegman
Publisher : Voyageur Press
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 41,29 MB
Release : 2008-11-15
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 1616731443

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The period from the 1890s to the mid-1950s is generally considered the “golden era� of passenger rail travel in America. It was a time of celebrated locomotives and luxurious passenger service, a time when rail technology saw its greatest advances and railroads became the nation’s favored mode of transportation. These glory years come alive in American Passenger Trains and Locomotives Illustrated, 1889–1971. For this volume, author and illustrator Mark Wegman has researched original railroad drawings and in some cases even paint chips to render more than 160 profiles, front and top views, and interior layouts depicting the steam, diesel, and electric locomotives, along with passenger cars, of three dozen of the nation’s most celebrated trains of the golden age. Accompanying the author’s drawings are histories of each train, period photographs, postcards, menus, luggage stickers, vintage print ads, and detailed captions. The book is a lavishly appointed journey back in time to the bygone heyday of passenger-train travel.

Author : Mike Schafer
Publisher : Motorbooks International
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 27,21 MB
Release : 2003-09
Category : Railroads
ISBN : 076031649X

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This book picks up where the previous two Classic American titles left off, focusing on the golden age of American railroading from 1945 to the early 1970s. It extends to the present day where applicable, providing a colorful look at locomotives, passenger and freight operations, development, and, in some cases, demise. Full color.

Author : Phillip H. Ault
Publisher : Dodd Mead
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 13,28 MB
Release : 1976
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN :

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Traces the history of the passenger train in the United States. Anecdotes describe travel on a number of well-known runs.

Author : John H. White
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 27,76 MB
Release : 1985
Category : Railroad passenger cars
ISBN : 0801827477

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Hailed since its publication as the definitive - and most opulent - book on the subject, The American Railroad Passenger Car is now made available in an unabridged two-part softcover edition.

Author : Geoffrey H. Doughty
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 25,33 MB
Release : 2021-09-07
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 0253060656

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Discover the story of Amtrak, America's Railroad, 50 years in the making. In 1971, in an effort to rescue essential freight railroads, the US government founded Amtrak. In the post–World War II era, aviation and highway development had become the focus of government policy in America. As rail passenger services declined in number and in quality, they were simultaneously driving many railroads toward bankruptcy. Amtrak was intended to be the solution. In Amtrak, America's Railroad: Transportation's Orphan and Its Struggle for Survival, Geoffrey H. Doughty, Jeffrey T. Darbee, and Eugene E. Harmon explore the fascinating history of this popular institution and tell a tale of a company hindered by its flawed origin and uneven quality of leadership, subjected to political gamesmanship and favoritism, and mired in a perpetual philosophical debate about whether it is a business or a public service. Featuring interviews with former Amtrak presidents, the authors examine the current problems and issues facing Amtrak and their proposed solutions. Created in the absence of a comprehensive national transportation policy, Amtrak manages to survive despite inherent flaws due to the public's persistent loyalty. Amtrak, America's Railroad is essential reading for those who hope to see another fifty years of America's railroad passenger service, whether they be patrons, commuters, legislators, regulators, and anyone interested in railroads and transportation history.

Author : Mike Schafer
Publisher : Motorbooks International
Page : 156 pages
File Size : 45,86 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 9780760308967

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From the Santa Fe "Super Chief" to modern Amtrak high-speed intercity services, this sprawling photographic history rambles through two centuries of passenger trains and presents a wealth of archival imagery and period color photos. 200 illustrations, 150 in color.

Author : John F. Stover
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 37,72 MB
Release : 2008-04-15
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 0226776603

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Few scenes capture the American experience so eloquently as that of a lonely train chugging across the vastness of the Great Plains, or snaking through tortuous high mountain passes. Although this vision was eclipsed for a time by the rise of air travel and trucking, railroads have enjoyed a rebirth in recent years as profitable freight carriers. A fascinating account of the rise, decline, and rebirth of railroads in the United States, John F. Stover's American Railroads traces their history from the first lines that helped eastern seaports capture western markets to today's newly revitalized industry. Stover describes the growth of the railroads' monopoly, with the consequent need for state and federal regulations; relates the vital part played by the railroads during the Civil War and the two World Wars; and charts the railroads' decline due to the advent of air travel and trucking during the 1950s. In two new chapters, Stover recounts the remarkable recovery of the railroads, along with other pivotal events of the industry's recent history. During the 1960s declining passenger traffic and excessive federal regulation led to the federally-financed creation of Amtrak to revive passenger service and Conrail to provide freight service on bankrupt northeastern railroads. The real savior for the railroads, though, proved to be the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which brought prosperity to rail freight carriers by substantially deregulating the industry. By 1995, renewed railroad freight traffic had reached nearly twice its former peak in 1944. Bringing both a seasoned eye and new insights to bear on one of the most American of industries, Stover has produced the definitive history of railroads in the United States.

Author : Randal O'Toole
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 19,97 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781944424947

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American transportation has undergone many technological revolutions: from sailing ships to steam ships; from passenger trains and urban rail transit to airplanes and automobiles. Normally, the government has allowed and even encouraged these revolutions, but for some reason the federal government is spending billions of dollars trying to preserve and build obsolete rail transit and passenger train lines, including high-speed trains that cost more but are less than half as fast as flying. O'Toole asks why passenger trains have been singled out -- and whether this policy makes sense. -- adapted from jacket

Author : Jim Boyd
Publisher : Motorbooks International
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 18,91 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Railroads
ISBN : 0760308330

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Photohistory examines the use of trains as freight haulers over the course of one and a half centuries. Depicts and explains the evolution of boxcars, flatcars, hoppers, refrigerator cars, tanks cars, ore jennies, auto-rack transports and more.