Customer Reviews

All Aboard With E.M. Frimbo: World's Greatest Railroad Buff (Kodansha Globe)

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I was the editor of the greatly expanded 1997 edition of this railroading classic of the 1970s. E.M. Frimbo was the alter ego of Whitaker, a writer who spent more than 50 years at the New Yorker, one of the original coterie that included A.J. Liebling, Joseph Mitchell, and others. Beginning in the 1940s, Frimbo began chugging through the pages of the magazine, right up to and beyond Whitaker's death in the early 1980s. In the 1960s, Tony Hiss had come along and become Whitaker's collaborator on these travel essays. When Hiss began to assemble this new edition, he discovered many pieces that were not in the earlier edition, so the book grew by 50%, and includes many photos of Whitaker never published before. Hiss unearthed such articles as one about the railway in Wales that travels through the Potemkin village where the classic TV show "The Prisoner" was filmed, and a final tribute to Whitaker, appropriately mounted to him at Cumbres Pass, the highest elevation in the USA reached by a train. If you have affection for the open (rail)road, then you will love this book.

I read this book as an 11 year old boy, and still remembered it over all these years as a wonderful railroading book. It really captured the glamour and joy of passenger rail travel in those days.

And I was excited and thrilled when I met Tony Hiss by chance on the Boston-NYC shuttle, and he told me that the book had been reissued and was available on Amazon. I (virtually) ran right out and purchased it...as much for my 9 year old (also a rail fan) as for myself.

This is much more than a delightful book on how rail travel use to be (and still can be). The hidden message that threads through Rogers E.M. Whitaker's writing is a wonderful philosophy on travel for the sake of travel. So many of us miss the point of making a trip and this book soon reveals that the secret is to make the most of the motion and simply enjoying the ride. Travel should not be seen as a means to an end...it is the opposite. Whitaker takes us back to another time when rail travel carried a certain romance with a bit of adventure. We should not simply fly over space to reach a destination; we should take the train as it is the destination itself. Whitaker's philosophy is seductive and it is still possible to replicate Whitaker's love of rail travel and the experiences he had. I recently took a trip round trip across America and found Whitaker's world of rail travel was still alive. As an example, I made a trip on Amtrak's 'The Crescent' from Charlottesville, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia. When my Amtrak train pulled into the station in Charlottesville, I was thoroughly surprised when my car stopped in front of me, the steward opened the door and greeted me by name and welcomed me aboard! What followed was caring, meticulous service where I felt I was traveling in my own private car. Or, there was the sector on the Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland and somewhere in Montana we were invited to a game of trivia and a wine tasting party in the dining car that ended up being a couple of hours of laughter and good times with people you did not know. This was Frimbo's travel world (no airline does this!). It is such a wonderful, fun book where one can lose one's self as a time traveler and escape the monotony of rushed travel and TSA security agents. It can be opened at any chapter and you are immediately shunted into a relaxed world of how travel is meant to be enjoyed. Well edited by Tony Hiss. A must for all travelers including those who just prefer to make the trip in an armchair. Frimbo's world of rail travel is a secret to be re-discovered and this book is the gateway.

Frimbo aims to ride every passenger train in the world and recounts his progress in this book. This goal is more difficult than it appears, because some trains exist only to connect two otherwise inaccessible points. Frimbo's experiences are a testimonial to what energy, ability and focus can accomplish. (It is possible that Frimbo's real name is Whitaker.) That this wonderful volume has been allowed to go out of print is a great loss to us vicarious adventurers.

The old nostalgic ways of travel -- railroad trains and ocean liners -- have a romance to them that cars and airplanes just can't match. Rogers E.M. Whitaker, the man behind the pseudonymous E.M. Frimbo, and his sometime collaborator, Tony Hiss, capture some of that romance and interest in these essays by and about the world's greatest railroad buff. Detailing some of Whitaker/Frimbo's great train experiences from the '30s to the '70s, and recapturing the all-but-vanished world of life on the rails, the pieces gathered here make for fascinating and evocative reading.

As with any collection of essays, some of the chapters here are better than others. And generally, I found the chapters added to this "greatly expanded edition" to be less satisfying than the earlier ones, though the obituary of Whitaker and the long closing piece, "Frimbo's Peak," were both rather moving. Much of Tony Hiss's preface I could likewise have done without. His predictions for the revival of government-funded passenger rail in the early years of the twenty-first century seem, fortunately, not yet to be coming to pass. But then, it wouldn't be the first time a Hiss was on the wrong side of history.

But don't let the preface distract you. The essays themselves are by and large great reading, and have me hoping to hop a train before too much longer myself. Whether you're an inveterate train buff, a long-time Frimbo fan, or just a fan of great travel writing, I recommend grabbing this book and taking to the rails, if only in your mind.