Waiting on a Train: the Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service a Year Spent Riding Across America

Description

Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Foreword; Prologue; Baltimore on the Oldest Railroad in America; Part 1: Through the Rockies and Sierras; California Zephyr here Come your Game Boys and Microwaves; Sacramento all you Got Now is Amtrak; Train World Foamers and Trainspotters; Real Railroad World the Birth of Amtrak; Part 2: Pacific Northwest; North Dakota Across on the Hi-Line; Essex, Montana at the Izaak Walton Inn; The Cascades Locomotive Problems; Seattle The â#x80;#x9C;Nâ#x80;#x9D; Word: Nationalization; Amtrak Cascades It's All about Frequency; Oregon Funding Rail with Vanity Plates.;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-ra.