Books about Amtrak and Rail Travel

[JRR]

Well, it’s fiction and a mystery, but The Christmas Train is an interesting book and unlike the movie, is a much more accurate story set in train travel from Washington DC to LA ( actually goes to Chicago and then on the Chief to LA.

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[Woodcut60]

@railiner: Impressive library. All Aboard With E M Frimbo is one of those legendary books I'd love to read.

Thanks all for your suggestions. My son gave me as a Christmas present A Book of Railway Journeys (1980), editor Ludovic Kennedy who has compiled a lot of novels, poems, travelogues, etc. with a train theme.

 

[Pere Flyer]

Would it be appropriate to mention here “Thomas the Tank Engine: The Complete Stories” by the Rev. W. Awdry? Great stories and illustrations. It galvanized my love of trains as a child.

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[Woodcut60]

@Pere Flyer: Yes, of course. In my original post I did not mention The Railway Children (1906) by Edith Nesbit, which I've read. A lovely children's book.

 

[Manny T]

Just saw the Pullman Porter documentary on PBS, based on "Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class," by Larry Tye. Imagine it's a good read.

 

[ceo418]

Another fiction murder mystery addition that I just recently read is "Loco motive" by Mary Daheim, where the two main characters are aboard the Empire Builder. It lists several of the actual stops through Montana and North Dakota. Of course some of the services are changed from real life, but having been on that route several times I found it to be a fun read. The author states in an afterword that train travel is the preferred way to go.

 

[flitcraft]

Does anyone know if the book, USA West by Train by Chris Hanus ever actually got published?  His Canadian rail book did, because I have a copy. Both were supposed to be published by Way of the Rail Publishing, which still has a snazzy website with all of their books listed as out of stock. 

Anybody know anything about the company or the books? 

 

[Rover]

I really enjoyed a Paperback named

"TRAIN" by Tom Zoellner/Penguin Books,2014.

I checked this out from the public library today. I was mostly just scanning what books were on the shelves in the "385" section of the stacks.

The other book I checked out was "Romance of the Rails" by Randall O'Toole (2018). I liked what I read at the library, on pages 202-206, where he explains how many other nations mostly truck their goods, but in America, we move quite a lot of goods by rail. I loved his analogy of how, while countries like Japan think they are being environmentally friendly because only 56% travel by Auto and 30% travel by rail... But 60% of their freight shipments travel by road, and only 4% travel by rail.

While in the US, 43% of freight shipments travel by rail. He states "America's rail system is the envy of the world, carrying more than six time as many ton-miles of freight each year as all of the EU-27 nations combined."

 

[railiner]

@railiner: Impressive library. All Aboard With E M Frimbo is one of those legendary books I'd love to read.

Thanks! I just discovered this old post.
I had the distinct pleasure of 'bumping into' "E M Frimbo" himself (otherwise known as Rogers EM Whitaker) aboard one of my many rail trips...
He was a delightful person, who loved telling his tales of travel, to all that would listen...
Here's a link to his bio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_E._M._Whitaker

I was especially interested in his onetime quest to travel coast to coast using electric interurban railways...

 

[Charles785]

OK, let's go back to the glory days of the streamlined California Zephyr operated by the Chicago Burlington and Quincy, Denver & Rio Grand Western, and Western Pacific railroads with Kansan Velma McPeek's glamorous Zephyrettes and read how they helped to solve murders and subdue bad guys. Well, yes, these stories are fiction, written by Janet Dawson, but they sure do have accurate descriptions of the young ladies and their trains. Start with Death Rides The Zephyr (2013), then Death Deals A Hand (2016), and finally The Ghost In Roomette Four (2018). Indeed, part of Janet Dawson's research involved interviewing former Zephyrettes.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I highly recommend a Paperback "Ticket to Ride" by Tom Chesshyre, Published in 2016.

Subtitle is "Around The World On 49 Unusual Train Journeys".

 

[Brian Battuello]

I've probably got 200 train books, but if I had to pick one, it would be "Never On Wednesday", the story of how the D&RGW kept the California Zephyr going for 10 years without Amtrak.

 

[Twin Star Rocket]

I have a passion for railroad depots as much as the passenger trains. There have been books published on these
grand stations: Chicago Union, Washington Union, Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, Cincinnati Union, Los Angeles Union, Atlanta (all of them), St. Louis Union, Kansas City Union, and others.

 

[Twin Star Rocket]

After years of searching for a copy of a book I've never even seen, a friend of mine recently gave me a copy of a very rare book published in the 1970s on Santa Fe Hi-level cars.