Customer Reviews

Twilight of the Great Trains

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This is a book that could double as a coffee table book with its plentiful illustrations, but which is really a detailed account of the last 20 years of privately operated passenger trains in the United States. The author describes in depth the forces leading to the downturn of passenger service, contrasting those railroads which attempted to hasten the end (e.g. Southern Pacific, whivh sold tickets without commission for airline travel) and those which fought it (e.g. Santa Fe, which developed the doubledeck viewliner cars now widely used today). While the tone of the book is sometimes rather somber and even depressing, the quality of research is outstanding and it ends on a hopeful note, with the birth of Amtrak. This is a valuable book for the student or enthusiast of American rail passenger travel

Amazon just delivered the "Expanded Edition" (2010) of Fred Frailey's original book, "Twilight of the Great Trains," published in 1998 by Kalmbach. This new edition is printed by Indiana University Press. Both books cost the same: $50 (interesting...no price inflation over 12 years; you can't say that about much else today, and the new book is 20 pages bigger!). Amazon sold it to me for $33.

In my opinion, the original book is the best treatment ever written about the final decade of passenger train operation in America. Fred's writing is detailed, comprehensive, and easy to understand. The passenger line diagrams of where the trains went, and their consists, is outstanding in understanding, even in the twilight of privately-operated passenger trains, just how fine tuned the system was. It's about as close to Trains editor David P Morgan's writing style as you'll find, and each chapter contains a wealth of knowledge written in a friendly "let me tell you about this" manner.

The new edition keeps all the text of the older one, and has added one entirely new chapter focused on the Illinois Central: "America's Main Street." It comprises 17 pages, 10 pictures, and a superb chapter closing tabular entry by Steve Parsons of Sparta, Illinois, which documents by motive power and individual passenger car names/numbers 17 trains and 352 cars that passed through Carbondale, Illinois, on December 21, 1963. Fascinating insight into a way of traveling in terms of numbers of trains and traffic density that has all but disappeared from America outside the Northeast Corridor, particularly on the former IC routes.

Ten different photos in the new book replace other images in the original version. One image, B&O's "Capitol Limited" leaving Baltimore in July 1965 has the identical caption as the 1998 version, but a different Herbert H. Harwood Jr. photograph. New to the book are a classic Richard Steinheimer view of the eastbound "City of San Francisco" in full cry leaving Oakland behind four PAs (Steinheimer always photographed PAs like they were steam locomotives, and it shows!) and a beautiful consist only shot of C&O's eastbound "George Washington" easing to a stop in the Alexandria, Virginia, depot in April 1968.

The original book used glossy paper; the IU edition uses more of a matte finish paper. Its images are sometimes a bit darker than the Kalmbach print, but in many respects I found the "almost sepia tone" to be more pleasant visually. Kalmbach's was printed in Hong Kong; IU's in China.

I'm glad I purchased the new edition. The fly leaf says the expanded edition "brings the story up to date." I don't think it does that, as the final chapter in both books is identical and there is no new forward in the 2010 edition. But the IC material is brand new, and I liked the printing of the 2010 version better than its 1998 predecessor. If you do not have the 1998 version, I can unequivocally recommend this book if you're interested in passenger trains on 12 great railroads in the last decade of their existence.

This is probably the best book I have ever read on the "downfall" of the post WWII passenger trains. I was particularly impressed with the coverage of the Southern and Seaboard Coast Line, since I "lived" the downfall. Factually correct in all respects.

Fred Frailey again reaches his usual high standard of work with the interesting case history of the demise of passenger trains in the US during the late 1950s through the advent of Amtrak in 1971. His approach to contrast the experiences of several individual railroads makes for interesting, well-paced, and entertaining reading. Anyone familiar with Frailey's previous work in Trains magazine or his other published volumes will not be disappointed in this work.

This book goes beyond the passenger trains to the railroad managers themselves, in an effort to portray how different railroads viewed their passenger train operations in the decade prior to Amtrak. In addition to providing a chronicle of events as the privately operated passenger train rolled toward oblivion, the author looks at the causes which were motivating the management of each of the railroad involved. The result is a fascinating overview of segments of America's passenger network in the late 1950s and 1960s. The usual villains are present -- a lopsided government transportation policy and a post office that was determined to shift from rail to air transportation, regardless of the cost.

Anyone interested in the history of passenger railroading in America, or anyone interested in learning about the transportation environment of the 1960s which led to the creation of Amtrak will find this book fascinating.

This is a great book about the end of privately operated passenger train travel in the United States, between the end of World War II and the start of Amtrak. It's a story of big dreams and dashed hopes told in an engaging style. Case in point: Frailey relates how a trip on the once-posh Texas Special went from crisp sheets and fluffy towels in the Pullmans and crystal-and-silver in the dining car to "a night spent in a Maytag dryer." Some railroad kept trying to the bitter end, others just gave up. Poignant and engaging, an excellent read.

Twilight of the Great Trains gave me a much better understanding of the downfall of the American passenger railroads and the creation of Amtrak. The chapter on Union Pacific was a bit of a disappointment, as it was mostly a chronology of events. But subsequent chapters got inside the heads of railroad executives and the different approaches they took to a common problem. Some couldn't wait to get rid of their passenger trains, while others held onto them as long as they possibly could. Sprinkled throughout are several interesting personal stories.

Missing from the narrative is a detailed discussion of government funding policies which heavily favored air and auto travel while excluding trains entirely. This was a major factor in the loss of passenger rail service in this country, for the trains were essentially trying to compete against government-built highways and airports.

Twilight of the Great Trains is a book you'll want to read cover-to-cover in one evening. From the clear, informative and reflective writing to the great photos, this book brought me back in time - a time of classic passenger train travel.

As an interested party well informed on this subject, I was impressed with this book and found its content well researched with good photography. Frailey's book left me wanting more -- as in a sequel covering other less famous but interesting trains of which their are many. Well done!

An outstanding history of the decline and eventual end of private-sector rail passenger service in the United States. Veteran railroad author and Trains magazine correspondent Fred Frailey details the varying approaches taken by different railroads to the pressures of competition from the highways and airlines and of regulation by state and federal agencies, all of them ultimately ending with the creation of Amtrak. Well illustrated with black and white and some color photographs, along with detailed diagrams illustrating routes and consists of major trains, this is a well-written look at the passenger rail industry of the 1960s.