Customer Reviews

Classic American Streamliners

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4 star:		(2)
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The best book of subject I have come across. Very interested in 30,40 and 50 Streamliners. Actually my time of RR trips. First was 37 Daylight from San Jose to Los Angeles. Worked on SP Coast Division late 40s and early 50s. Ticket/baggage clerk. Only error I found was on page 94. I believe the Shasta Daylight is in Klamath Falls OR and not Dunsmuir CA. Great book.

Harry A Olund Placerville CA Docent Cal State RR Museum Sacramento

This book provides an excellent history of the development of the streamliner era. It covers the story of the "lightweight" passenger cars and goes into some detail about the individual trains from the 1930s up to the creation of Amtrak in 1971.

As an Amtrak fan myself, I was particularly fascinated with the story of Santa Fe's El Capitan Hi-Level cars. These cars evolved into today's Amtrak Superliners, which are standard equipment on most of today's long distance trains.

The book presents a detailed history of the creation and evolution of these luxurious streamlined trains, including some insights into the minds of their creators. For example, the dome car was conceived in the mind of a General Motors executive while riding in a locomotive passing through Colorado's Glenwood Canyon. He thought the passengers should have a view as good as the engineer had.

The book is loaded with colorful photos and images from travel brochures, railroad advertisements, and the like. Many of these show cutaway diagrams of passenger cars, a terrific visual aid. Another nice feature is a glossary, uniquely presented at the beginning of the book, to aid those not familiar with railroad terms.

If there is a downside to the book it is that the text doesn't give any real explanation for the downfall of these great trains and why Amtrak had to take over. About all we are given are the dates the trains went out of service or were turned over to Amtrak. Given the comprehensive history presented on the streamliners early years, I feel this is a serious omission. It is a topic that has a direct bearing on the state of intercity transportation in America today.

This is definitely a worthwhile read, but it will leave you wondering how our railroads got into the sad state they are in today.

I have always loved railroads, especially passenger trains. I grew up in the sixties and had the opportunity to ride the Southern Crescent and Seaboard's Silver Comet many times. It truly covers passenger rail history from the 1930's to the 1960's comprehensively.

Kudos to Mssrs. Schafer & Welsh. CLASSIC AMERICAN STREAMLINERS is worth its price just for the wealth of photographs (the majority in color) of these stylish steel titans of a bygone era! Its more than just a picture book as the text is also extremely informative.I especially enjoyed learning where a vintage locomotive wound up after its days on the raills ended (Scrapheap? Museum?) If you're a train buff, you NEED this book! Not a train buff? If you read this book and you just might become one!

This is a good book for train buffs. I had it with a different cover. If I had known that or previewed the contents, I wouldn't have bought it.

This book contains excellent illustrations and very good segmenting into roads and regions. The content is informative and easy to read. It is definitely worth owning.

The only disappointment to me was the emphasis on diesel/diesel electric streamliners and not enough focus on steam conversions. While all streamliners ushered in a new era in passenger traffic, the more compelling area of interest, and the more romanticized, is the efforts made by the railroads' own shops or design departments to build or participate in the development of a radical new steam engine.

These streamlined engines are what that line staked its future on by differentiating it from the black boiler plate that often served dual purpose as freight hauler and in passenger service for other lines. These engines had a purpose; to make a statement and to lure passengers. They can tell a better story than the F and E units that most will realize originated with a one-size-fits all offering. This was a lead essentially followed by other manufacturers. The War Production Board may have inadvertently given EMD an advantage that gave us a homogenized diesel electric look resulting in generic engines that didn't begin to match the imaginative styling of the steam conversions.