Product Description: The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is the federal agency primarily responsible for safety in the rail industry. FRA's safety programs were last authorised in 1994; their authorisation expired in 1998. Most measures of rail safety have improved significantly since FRA's last authorisation, including the number of grade crossing collisions and fatalities and the number of employee injuries and deaths...read more

Product Description: 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...read more

From the time he was 18 in St. Paul, James J. Hill (1838-1916) dreamed of a ship and rail bridge to the riches of the mysterious Orient. Through a succession of jobs, he absorbed every detail of moving goods by land and by water, which contributed to the excellent management and low-cost operation of his railroad empire. He made financial history by shaping the Northern Securities Co., a holding device dissolved by the Supreme Court in 1904. As founder of the Great Northern Railway, Hill was an American railroad icon and one of Ayn Rand's industrialist heroes. After his retirement, he wrote "Highways of Progress," originally published in 1910, and toured the country speaking about the virtues of capitalism and a hard work ethic. Near the end of his life, James J. Hill was asked by a newspaper reporter to reveal the secret of his success. Hill responded with characteristic bluntness, "Work, hard work, intelligent work, and then more work." Hill became a pivotal force in the transformation of the Northwest as his railroad served as the backbone of American settlement, agricultural development and commercial expansion.

Product Description: Perhaps the most well-known railroad in transportation history, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway grew from humble beginnings in 1868 to a high-flying icon of the American West known more simply as “the Santa Fe.” In 1995, it merged with Burlington Northern and today its legacy survives as part of BNSF Railway...read more

Book Description: The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific was a railroad with a big personality. For a time it offered the world’s fastest steam-powered passenger trains. Extending from Indiana to Puget Sound, it crossed five mountain ranges in Montana, Idaho, and Washington...read more

Product Description: More than just a railroad, the Southern Pacific was an empire, anchored in San Francisco but stretching from Portland, Oregon, to several ports on the Gulf of Mexico. From austere western roots, the "Espee" grew into a far-flung railroad of some 17,000 route miles...read more

Product Description: This title combines three complementary titles on popular subject in one attractive gift package. Railroads have been part of the American way of life since 1828 when America's first common-carrier railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, laid its first rail...read more

Product Description: Following on the heels of Images of Rail: The Southern Railway, this volume takes a more detailed look at a historic railroad that has served the South for over 100 years and continues to serve as the Norfolk Southern Railway. Included in these pages are stories of bravery in war andingenuity in peace...read more

Product Description: In this companion volume to his Burlington Route - The Early Zephyrs, author Geoffrey H. Doughty traces the postwar Zephyr fleet from the birth of the modern dome car in 1945 through to the Burlington Northern merger of 1970. Along the way, readers are introduced to such streamlined passenger train icons as the 1949 California Zephyr and the 1956 Denver Zephyr, as well as lesser lights from the CB&Q's timetables...read more

Product Description: The Southern Railway was the pinnacle of rail service in the South for nearly 100 years. Its roots stretch back to 1827, when the South Carolina Canal & Rail Road Company was founded in Charleston to provide freight transportation and America's first regularly scheduled passenger service...read more

Product Description: This 432-page 8 1/2" x 11" hardbound tells of the numerous lifetime railroad adventures of Bob Richardson, noted author, photographer and historian. Bob, a railfan’s railfan, originally released the book in 1995 under the Sundance Publications label, and it sold out...read more

Product Description: From dizzying mountain passes to verdant pine valleys and arid desert canyons, the regions spanning the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast have always presented the railroad industry with special difficulties, spurring the development of new equipment to surmount those challenges...read more

Product Description: Although it was America's first public railroad, chartered in 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio did not enter the lucrative Philadelphia and New York City markets until the 1880s, long after its rivals, notably the Pennsylvania Railroad, had established themselves in the Northeast corridor...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: After almost a quarter of a century, Monon: The Hoosier Line is back in print in a revised second edition featuring an enlarged Epilogue, additional photographs, and a new Afterword. Monon celebrates the history of this magnificent railroad, from its inception in 1847 as the New Albany & Salem Rail Road and then the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago, to its merger in 1970 with the L&N and beyond, with an informative text, 258 black and white illustrations, and a special color insert...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Since its creation in 1970, Amtrak has sought to relieve railroad companies of costly passenger operations while continuing US rail service. However, Amtrak has come under fire for its own inability to turn a profit, though passenger rail service is historically unprofitable...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: This follow-up to the MBI bestseller Classic American Railroads is a beautiful tribute to 15 additional railroads not included in the first volume. Focusing on the golden age of railroading between World War II and the early 1970s, this all-new book features the histories, locomotives, rolling stock, and memorabilia of railroads like the Delaware & Hudson; Erie Lackawanna; Gulf, Mobile & Ohio; St...read more

Product Description: This deluxe, coffee table book is filled with a large variety of spectacular modern-day images of railroading in the desert, including a range of states and railroads, both large and small. With detailed historical commentary this book is a colourful tribute to past, present and future railroads that serve this region...read more

Product Description: An original approach for dealing with High Speed Rail (HSR) transportation development in the United States, this book serves as a blueprint for such development by providing an in-depth evaluation of the different systems and their inherent linkage to other transportation modes, their potential costs, financing options, system benefits, the current level of use and success of HSR and Maglev elsewhere in the world, the current state of thinking on these systems in the US and their prospects to further efficient and environmentally benign economic growth...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

One of Amtrak's original creators thirty years ago calls Amtrack a 'failed experiment,' and makes suggestions based on his own experience, as well as on successful rail lines in other countries, on how to improve America's passenger train system. (view table of contents)