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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.
Foreword ix
Prologue Baltimore On the Oldest Railroad in America xiii
Part 1 Through the Rockies and Sierras 1
California Zephyr Here Come Your Game Boys and Microwaves 3
Sacramento All You Got Now Is Amtrak 11
Train World Foamers and Trainsp otters 14
Real Railroad World The Birth of Amtrak 20
Part 2 Pacific Northwest 25
North Dakota Across on the Hi-Line 27
Essex, Montana At the Izaak"Walton Inn 34
The Cascades Locomotive Problems 39
Seattle The "N" word: Nationalization 44
Amtrak Cascades Its All about Frequency 47
Oregon Funding Rail with Vanity Plates 54
Empire Builder The Best Kept Secret in America 57
Part 3 The Midwest 61
Chicago A Third-World Train Set 63
Madison Everything Has Six Zeros in It 69
Part 4 The Middle Atlantic 75
Lakeshore Limited But I Don't Want a Burger 77
The Acela Express Aboard America's Fastest Train 80
Washington, D. C. Running Out of Capacity 85
Norfolk, Virginia Make Those People Go Away 92
Raleigh, North Carolina A State-Owned Railroad 98
The Carolinian National Train Day 103
Union Station, Washington, D. C. When Railroads Were Bad to the Bone 106
The Capitol Limited America Rides These Trains 113
Part 5 California 119
The Southwest Chief On the Trans con 121
Pacific Surfliner On Board the California Car 125
The Coast Starlight A California Train Inside and Out 132
Capitol Corridor Trains in the Streets of Oakland 135
Caltrans, Sacramento A Billion Dollars Ready to Go 142
High Speed Rail Authority, Sacramento Building Another Hoover Dam 145
California Railroad Museum, Sacramento Railroads Become Road Kill 149
Amtrak Western Division, Oakland Freight that Talks 152
California ZephyrA Stunning Long Way to Go 156
Colorado River Yak-Yak on the Radio 159
Denver Waiting for Those Freighters 162
Part 6 Texas 167
The Texas Eagle Diner Lite 169
Longview,Texas Don't You Get it? We Don't Care 174
Houston A Pitiful Harvest by Bus 179
Dallas A Texas T-Bone Bullet Train 182
BNSF Headquarters, Fort Worth We Care. We. Really Do 189
Texas Eagle No Mac and Cheese 194
Part 7 The Northeast 201
The Hiawatha Deadly Days 203
The Capitol Limited A Complete Washout 207
Union Station, Washington, D. C. The Big Lie of Profitability 211
Amtrak Headquarters Broken Governance and the Amtrak Haters 216
Philadelphia Trains with People in Them 220
Boston I Was Your Governor 222
Cambridge Mega-Regions: 100 Million More People 226
The Downeaster Maine's Very Own Train 229
Lake Shore Limited Can I Sit Somewhere Else? 233
Part 8 The Gulf Coast 239
City of New Orleans On the Main Line of Mid-America 241
Meridian, Mississippi Interstate II in FifteenYears' 244
New Orleans Rail:The Red-Headed Stepchild 250
CSX Headquarters, Jacksonville Where's the Vision, Where's the Money? 253
Tallahassee Left without a Cadillac 257
Silver Meteor A Bed and 600 Miles 260
Virginia Beach Railpax: Set Up to Fail 262
Washington, D. C. The Freight-Railroad Boys 267
Epilogue Pittsburgh On Train Time Again 271
Index 279
About the Author 287
RunningWithScalpels
Posted April 30, 2013
A fantastic book which shows how and why Amtrak is largely a joke outside of the Northeast Corridor and why this country has such lackluster passenger rail service. A must read for anyone who has a scrap of interest in trains.
Go figure though, after reading this book, which focuses on the author's travels across the country on various Amtrak routes throughout 2008, chock full of tales of trains who are continually late, I am itching to take my next trip to South Carolina on the Crescent...even though arrival and departure times from my destination are insanely inconvenient.
Anonymous
Posted January 28, 2013
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted July 3, 2010
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted April 24, 2010
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
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 ...