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.

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.

Passenger Trains played an important role in the growth of traveling across America or to the nearest city—the height of its service after WWII until the start up of Amtrak. This book provides railroad hobbyists, historians, museum operators, and transportation instructors and planners with information about the types of train services and operations in various corridors, such as Chicago – Milwaukee; the overnight and daytime long distance service; transcontinental trains, and the various types of local trains on both main lines and branch lines. The book reviews the types of sleeping car, coach, parlor car, food and beverage services available at that time. The equipment and service such as vista dome coaches, dining and lounge cars with many types of meals and beverages, sleeping accommodations and coach seats including reclining and leg rests were drawing cards for passenger traffic. This historic review, including train schedules and advertisements, provides information on train consists which is valuable for creating model railroad layout size trains.

Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted play from the legendary Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian. 'The Sunset Limited grips from the very first page' – Financial Times A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made. In that small apartment the two men, known as 'Black' and 'White', begin a conversatino that leads each back through his own history. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con in recovery for drug addiction, is the more hopeful of the men. He is, however, desperate to convince White of the power of faith – while White is desperate to deny it. Between them, they hope to discover the meaning of life itself. Praise for Cormac McCarthy: ‘McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute’ – Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren 'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' – Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series '[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' – Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain

"Craig Sanders has done an excellent job of research . . . his treatment is as comprehensive as anyone could reasonably wish for, and solidly based. In addition, he succeeds in making it all clear as well as any human can. He also manages to inject enough humor and human interest to keep the reader moving." —Herbert H. Harwood, author of The Lake Shore Electric Railway Story and Invisible Giants: The Empires of Cleveland's Van Sweringen Brothers A complete history of Amtrak operations in the heartland, this volume describes conditions that led to the passage of the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970, the formation and implementation of Amtrak in 1970–71, and the major factors that have influenced Amtrak operations since its inception. More than 140 photographs and 3 maps bring to life the story as told by Sanders. This book will become indispensable to train enthusiasts through its examination of Americans' long-standing fascination with passenger trains. When it began in 1971, many expected Amtrak to last about three years before going out of existence for lack of business, but the public's continuing support of funding for Amtrak has enabled it and the passenger train to survive despite seemingly insurmountable odds.