Customer Reviews

By Streamliner New York to Florida

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Beautifully illustrated, lovingly detailed; Joe Welsh has done a fantastic job of documenting the history of passenger service to Florida via Seaboard Air Line, Atlantic Coast Line, and Florida East Coast, from the late 1800's up until Amtrak. A must-have book for anyone interested in those railroads, or in passenger trains. Loaded with great pictures of famous and not-so-famous trains, inside and out, as well as many actual train consists for given dates down through the years on particular routes. A wealth of information about just about every aspect of passenger service on these roads between Florida and the Northeast. A great read for any railfan.

BY STREAMLINER FROM NEW YORK TO FLORIDA by Joseph Welsh must have been one of 2002's more popular rail-oriented books; a check of Amazon for "bestseller" potential in its field brings that truth closer to light. This is not a huge surprise because, in fact, BY STREAMLINERS appeals to at least six different groups of readers, for instance:
(1) railway history buffs, of course; for there is not only a lot of solid stuff here for specialists in railway history in general but also for students of
(2) these three dominant Florida rail lines in particular -- the Seaboard Air Line, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Florida East Coast -- all lumped in with rail megasystem CSX Transportation in the 1980s (only the "S" remains to remind us of the Seaboard); not to mention
(3) those fortunate folk who rode and remembered the experience of private-company rail travel from carriers that were constantly on their mettle to be the best in the lucrative snowbelt-to-Florida service; and
(4) younger folks like me for whom the pre-Amtrak era is entirely or mostly history; not to leave out
(5) lovers of 1950s style, documentation of serious design as well as the "populuxe" kitsch of contemporary art and dress (check out the cover of this book for a starter, of a Florida-bound SAL streamliner though northern snow and under the New York - to D.C. "catenary" electric wires); and last but not least
(6) folks who just love the romance of railroading in general.

BY STREAMLINER TO FLORIDA is a close-to-irreplaceable book, of an era and milueu as familiar to us as Aunt Blanche's trip to Fort Lauderdale and as romantic and compelling as a lost empire of different lines from different companies with different operating cultures, different styles of advertising and publicity, different on-board designs, even different menus. It's loaded with photographs of people and trains, rail employees and their locomotives, sleepers, diners and coaches; also observations and photo-reduced copies of originals -- many of which appear here in a non-specialty volume for the first time (what about those vintage menus with their vintage prices?).

None of this is coming back; the era between World War II demobilization and Amtrak's May 1, 1971 inauguration is a closed field. Even routine artifacts from these well-regarded companies who kept up "Santa Fe" standards of service, without (yet) attaining the mass consciousness that Super Chiefs and Navajo turquoise enjoy, are increasingly valued. SAL, ACL, and FEC passenger timetables from the Fifties and Sixties fetch $10-15 up from vendors and rail conventions, even a little roughed-up; clean dining- and bar-car menus are worth their weight in [not gold, but] literally in silver. Today, Amtrak still operates two of the Silver Series of streamliners (with newer equipment) up the Coast and back; but while Amtrak's systemwide standardization of day coaches and diners may be familiar, it cannot replace the uniqueness and vivacity, guts and gumption of the American private passenger rail experience at its finest, pre-1971.

BY STREAMLINER was published (in paperback) in 2002 by Motor Books International (MBI), who continue to publish heavily about American railroading but whose more recent entries have tended to be similarly "small art book" sized volumes (this go-round, hardbound) about individual railroad companies from both the pre- and post-megamerger waves of the 1980s and 1990s. While we're waiting for the publisher to wise up and reprint our book, used copies are available thru Amazon but the closest they are to new, the more they cost -- over $100 in some instances. Happily, you can snag a "good"-ranked used copy for a lot less.

BTW -- If, after this treat, you want to read a well written and fairly comprehensive history of American railroading 1970-2000, one place to start is MAIN LINES by Richard Saunders, Jr., available here (2008) in print.