A charming mix of how-to, RR love and operation. Short of the "bible," Armstong's The Railroad--What It Is..., this is the best work on the history, development, use and function of track, rolling stock, signals that we've found outside the textbooks. Jargon is explained (including a 45 p. glossary). Fine, fun, informative book. Published by Sand River Press, 1319 14th Street, Los Osos, CA 93402. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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.

Heightened awareness of North America's vulnerability to terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 has precipitated a crisis for transport suppliers and cargo owners, one that jeopardizes economic prosperity. Mary Brooks examines one industry sector of the North American economic relationship - transportation services - from the perspectives of transport supplier, cargo owner and policymaker. Ensuring security in international transportation without compromising operational effectiveness is a delicate balancing act. There is concern that economic benefits from NAFTA and the Canada-US Trade Agreement may have been diminished by the current security focus of American officials. The author addresses these concerns, beginning with a history of NAFTA and subsequent continental economic integration. Succeeding chapters provide an economic and regulatory assessment of the North American transport network, and examine key issues for both cargo interests and surface transport suppliers. The issues of perimeter security and growing regionalization are also explored. The author closes with a discussion of North America's transportation future under the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The unique insights of North American Freight Transportation will be of interest to policymakers, those in the transport sector, as well as researchers and practitioners in political science and trade economics.

For close to 100 years, America's surface freight industries, primarily rail and trucking, operated under the protective wing of the U.S. government. In 1980 Congress, finding vast inefficiencies in the two industries, substantially deregulated both, opening them at last to market competition. Deregulation has brought with it many changes—for firms within the industries, for their labor force, and for shippers and their customers. Clifford Winston, Thomas M. Corsi, Curtis M. Grimm, and Carol A Evans provide a comprehensive evaluation of the effect of the deregulation legislation on the rail and trucking industries. According to the authors, deregulation has made substantial progress in solving the two most vexing problems of the surface freight transportation industry—excessive rates in the trucking industry and insufficient returns on investment in the rail industry. Competition and efficiency have returned to both industries, and although the labor force in each has suffered wage and job losses, shippers and their customers have gained roughly $20 billion a year in benefits. The authors recommend policies that would continue to promote competition and the efficient use of highway and railway infrastructure.

Trucking Country is a social history of long-haul trucking that explores the contentious politics of free-market capitalism in post-World War II America. Shane Hamilton paints an eye-opening portrait of the rural highways of the American heartland, and in doing so explains why working-class populist voters are drawn to conservative politicians who seemingly don't represent their financial interests. Hamilton challenges the popular notion of "red state" conservatism as a devil's bargain between culturally conservative rural workers and economically conservative demagogues in the Republican Party. The roots of rural conservatism, Hamilton demonstrates, took hold long before the culture wars and free-market fanaticism of the 1990s. As Hamilton shows, truckers helped build an economic order that brought low-priced consumer goods to a greater number of Americans. They piloted the big rigs that linked America's factory farms and agribusiness food processors to suburban supermarkets across the country. Trucking Country is the gripping account of truckers whose support of post-New Deal free enterprise was so virulent that it sparked violent highway blockades in the 1970s. It's the story of "bandit" drivers who inspired country songwriters and Hollywood filmmakers to celebrate the "last American cowboy," and of ordinary blue-collar workers who helped make possible the deregulatory policies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and set the stage for Wal-Mart to become America's most powerful corporation in today's low-price, low-wage economy. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

An illustrated guide to the wide variety of freight car equipment of the railroads that have and continue to service North America, this book covers each type of freight car and what it was designed to haul, as well as the equipment necessary to keep them all ‘on track.’ Equipment designs are based on the type of commodity that would be shipped. For example, 24-foot box cars are designed to handle 75 to 85 tons of iron ore. High cubic capacity covered hopper cars are designed for handling grain traffic, while lower cubic capacity is designed for handling heavy commodities, such as cement. See the changes for each type through time, like the early Refrigerated Cars that required ice which have evolved into today’s much larger Mechanical Reefers. Great book for modelers.