I intend to write a book on Amtrak

[Green Maned Lion]

I’ve been contemplating writing a book on Amtrak for some time. I want to write a fairly extensive book primarily covering Amtrak’s history. I want to cover its political, business, and fleet history, as well as its routes. I particularly want to concentrate on the business aspect of it.

I intend for the book to include the following:

1- Before Amtrak: A brief history of American passenger rail and what lead up to Amtrak’s formation

2- Formation of Amtrak: An relatively in-depth overview the legal, funding, and organization of Amtrak

3- General History of Amtrak: A history of Amtrak starting on May 1st, ’71 until more or less present day, primarily from the funding/legal/political side.

4- Route History of Amtrak: A sectional segment describing each route Amtrak has covered, both current and past. Details of what it passes, the trains that serve or served it, its political, economic and social importance, and a demographic of who rode it and why.

5- Amtrak’s Fleet: Another sectional segment, listing all of Amtrak’s rolling stock types, divided by category. For instance, Part 5: Rolling Stock- Chapter 3- Cars- Amfleets- Amfleet II- Amlounge. Describing its layout, statistics, its purpose, and a history of how it came out to be.

6- A detailed overview of Amtrak’s major stations, as well as a relative listing of stations overall, both pas and present

7- A look into Amtraks future. This would probably be good reading in the future as comedy. These types of things often are.

The section of the book that contained information about the Fleet would be highly pictured, although in an organized way. The other sections would contain relevant pictures and maps when needed. I am not creating “an illustrated history” so to speak.

I purchased, for help, the MPI book Amtrak by Brian Solomon. It is proving woefully inadequate in helping me with my intentions. I am not criticizing Mr. Solomon- its a pretty good History of Amtrak for someone who doesn’t know the generalities of Amtrak’s history. I do. I’m intending something a little more in-depth than his in some areas, and with a lot more specific details on routes and the fleet. Also, his was obviously thoroughly researched, and well written, but he clearly is stating opinions and drawing conclusions from information not available to me.

I am, obviously, going to need to spend quite some time digging like a gopher researching this project. But I would really like to have a nice, solid, scholarly outline of this stuff to start with, so I can figure out what holes are there and need to be plugged doing research. Obviously, I am eventually going to be spending several days sequestered at the Library Of Congress.

Your help, however, would be appreciated!

Do any of you know any books that are more in depth than the one I am reading? I’m talking scholarly text type stuff- the kind of thing the average reader wouldn’t be interested in.

I’d like to get as much of this stuff done from my house and have a solid amount of it laid out before I go to fill in holes and answer the unanswered questions. I can’t affored to spend months in the LOC.

So I’d really like some help finding where to get detailed information of the above kinds and any other types.

Thanks, Guys.

 

[dan72]

I don't know if this is useful or not, but I am currently reading 'The Sante Fe Chiefs' which is published under MBI. It gives a great history of the passenger routes that Santa Fe ran during its heyday and spends a little bit of time on the Amtrak takeover. It also explores the El Capitan and the Hi-Liners which were a big influence in the development of the Superliners.

Anyway, hopefully this will be useful. Good luck!!

Dan

 

[Guest]

"and a demographic of who rode it and why."

Is the "it" strictly limited to the time period from Amtrak forward or are you looking at a specific route throughout its history. An example is the Amtrak Crescent, now, versus its predecessor, the Southern Crescent (both of which I rode).

I love history and find that the books written closest to the historical events involved tend to be more frank and less politically correct. Thus, my library includes all manner of books (primarily Southern history) from the 1800s to the mid 1900s. The detail is more vivid in the older books. (Note that I never looked through my stuff from a rail traveler's viewpoint.)

What stands out when looking at old history books is how cosmopolitan people in the country really were. People traveled a lot more than is commonly believed. As an example, Major-General Sherman left a 3G Grandfather's house standing in Atlanta (according to the Federal survey taken as Atlanta lay smoldering). Other grandfathers were firefighters and policemen in Atlanta during that time so they were probably too busy to leave. That Grandfather reportedly refugeed (that's what it was called) to New Orleans and Boston. He was a surgeon over one of the Civil War field hospitals somewhere in the Atlanta area. He probably took the train in each of those directions. Quite possibly, Sherman encouraged the refugees to take outbound trains before he made Atlanta mad. He appears positively to have told the residents not to stick around and watch. About 35 years later and around 1902 or so, the passengers were evacuated from a train somewhere around New Orleans because my (toddler) grandmother was thought to have smallpox. Her family group had a habit of traveling back and forth between Texas and Georgia on the train. Neither my grandmother nor her sister ever drove a car in their lives (passed 1976).

Are you going back that far in passenger routes or starting sometime more recently?

Note that some of the universities, including University of NC, are digitalizing their collections and "collections" are where you'll spend a lot of time if you go way back. The LOC probably has digitalized some as well.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

My book will be primarily contained to Amtrak. The first part, about pre-Amtrak is more to explain how we got there than anything else. It will be a cursory investigation of the problems that caused the creation of Amtrak, rather than an in-depth history of it.

The route history is the history strictly speaking under Amtrak. Some mention will obviously be made to the predecessor trains as a matter of course, but the point is strictly a matter of reference. The book is about Amtrak as a company, its shortfalls, its problems, and all of those other things.

Understanding that I don't know as many facts as I will need to write the following, and that I am using a somewhat Abstract example:

Example: The Southwest Chief runs from Chicago to Los Angeles, essentially follows the BNSF mainline. This line originally hosted famous Santa Fe trains such as the Super Chief, Chief, and El Captain. When Amtrak first took over the route, Santa Fe soon decided that Amtrak was not meeting its requirements for quality, and required Amtrak to drop the vaunted Super Chief name. Amtrak complied, renaming this train the Southwest Limited, however in 1984 partly because of the switch over to Superliner trainsets, Santa Fe compromised and allowed Amtrak to call it the current name.

At which point I'd go on to more modern details.

 

[WhoozOn1st]

Seek a good illustrator and make it a children's pop-up book.

 

[rmgreenesq]

for a look at the economics of Amtrak and the history of its founding take a look at Amtrak in Perspective: Where Goest the Pointless Arrow? Edwin P. Patton The American Economic Review, Vol. 64, No. 2. It is a short article, but has lots of citations which is useful for a place to start.

Rick

 

[Everydaymatters]

How many do you expect to sell?

 

[PerRock]

I played around with the idea once to make a book on Amtrak's equipment. but sadly it ever got anywhere. Best of luck to ya!

peter

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I was figuring something in the low-five-digit range (10-15,000 copies) maybe. If I can do more than that, I'll be happy. If I can't, oh well.

Thanks for the info, RMGreen.

Actually, Per, if you want to help me with compiling and or writing that section, I'd be interested in the help.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I think going into more detail about the pre-Amtrak history of the routes would make the book more interesting.

You'll find some information about Amtrak if you make a habiti of going to news.google.com and searching for ``Amtrak''. In addition to discovering there's a weekly story about how it's news that when a train hits a car, the car isn't terribly intact after the crash, just like every other previous week when that happened, you'll find stories related to potential improvements of service. Looking at the current news stories will give you a sense of what sorts of subject matter older news stories would be likely to cover, and then you can go looking in the library.

Much as the Library of Congress is a great excuse to take the Acela to DC, you may find that your local library can actually help you out quite a bit. Many library systems allow you to use their online catalog to request that books from nearby libraries be sent to the library most convenient to you for you to pick them up. But my local library also can get just about any book from another state if I go to the reference desk and ask them for the book by interlibrary loan.

Asking a reference librarian how to find news stories from the 1970s about a particular route may also prove useful. There's a good chance you won't need to go to the Library of Congress for that.

You may also want to investigate whether the Freedom of Information Act will be helpful in your research. Be aware that it can take a very long time for those requests to be processed; if there's some information you're going to want for the book, asking for it sooner rather than later will increase the chance that you will get the information in time for it to end up in the book.

I also think visuals such as graphs can be very useful in expressing points that can be difficult for readers to parse when the same information is presented in prose, and that looking for ways to provide graphs, illustrations, etc that support the text will end up making the book better.

Having a detailed outline is great, but be prepared for it to evolve as you learn more about the subject matter.

 

[PerRock]

Actually, Per, if you want to help me with compiling and or writing that section, I'd be interested in the help.

I'm not much of a writer, but might be willing to do some illustrations of cars and such (depending on scheduling, etc)

peter

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I've been compiling a database of Amtrak's cars, and OTOLs current roster has been very helpful for some information, particularly the current status of car types. I need more information, however, on heritage cars, the numbers built of equipment, and equipment prices. Anyone know where I can find this information?

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

This may seem off -base but consider buying an Official Railroad Guide from pre-Amtrak days. I understand they can sometimes be found on e-bay at reasonable prices.

They will show schedules and equipment all over the country for pre-Amtrak. Maybe buy one from a "rich"era like the mid-50's and for comparison, one much more recent, like the late 60's, to show how much passenger rail was disappearing.

That could be a lot of irrelevant non-Amtrak trivia, but still l it would show what was behind it all, and how baddly it deteriated, though without the editorializng comment an actual book would help you with.

Amtrak purchased mostly the best of the railroad's equipment. Much of it did not match colors and it reecived a lot of criticism for non-matching consists. That is not quite fair. For the first time ever was a national system and any type of equipment could go anywhere.

Thus trains started having domes where they did not have them before, leg rest coaches, slumbercoaches , etc where they had not been before.

To iit's credit Amtrak was tryng to spread out the goodies with the best equipment everywhere in the few trains which were left no matter how much it did not match.

Of course the downside of this was lack of parts and lack of crew knowledge in different parts of the country from which the equipment was originally purchased.

But for that matter. many of the trains before Amtrak had become a hodgepodge of mis-matching equipment, and that sometimes for the best of reasons, to get good equipment (on the inside) spread around to as many trains as possible. The railroads were good about "handing-me-down" better equipment to lesser trains when it was no longer needed on the better train whether it matched colors or not. They got zero credit for that.

What I am trying to say is that many pre-Amtrak trains which were not "streamliners" in all the meanings of that term, still often wound up with streamlined hand-me-down equipment , while still maintaining their slower multi-stop schedules.

 

[Guest_Yerry_*]

Something to remember...

Railroads that joined Amtrak had to pay a fee of one year's losses; the payment could be cash or equipment. Sorry to say, but a fair chunk of it was junk that never turned a wheel.

The newer/newest Pullman-Standard equipment was the worst. PS didn't want to pay Budd for use of their stainless steel shotwelding method, so they used carbon steel in their open-box girder construction and hung stainless steel fluting over it. Water collected between the two layers and rusted the interior steel with a vengeance. C&O's entire streamlined fleet had this problem, to where they removed the stainless steel, patched the steel, and painted the exterior. The cars assigned on the former PM lines fared the worst. Although many earliest Amtrak pictures show a C&O coach, they barely survived a year. A half-dozen cars languished in storage, one of them being the PV in Pere Marquette colors (eagle canon?), and then were sold or scrapped.

This happened again with the ConRail formation when Amtrak took over the NEC. Again, a lot of equipment was sold/assigned to Amtrak that made exactly one trip-- to the scrappers. The fleet of Also RS switchers come to mind, with some 57 (?, but the number seems right) transferred to Amtrak, but only a dozen or so actually ran, with three lasting for any real amount of time-- these were re-engined with EMD diesels.

So, any research/writing will involve plowing through an immense amount of garbage. I will admit that I'm interested in finding out HOW Amtrak was able to be saddled with so much junk (both times). But, I've worked on all-encompassing roster projects before, and after twenty pages or so of "1st 9022", 2nd 9022", "3rd 9022", etc, the projects always end with me saying "Wait until somebody comes out with a better database program." I find it to be far faster to simply root through three feet of printouts, photocopies, other books and handwritten logs.

You have a project in front of you that's far beyond gargantuan. Take this as a pre-event compliment: If you do 1/4 of what this project entails, you'll have accomplished many times more than what I did in three tries, combined.

Good luck and best wishes.

 

[PRR 60]

There is a book that I bought years ago that offers a pretty comprehensive history of Amtrak from the initial legislative efforts to 1991. It includes a tabulation of individual train operations from Day One to the 20th anniversary of Amtrak.

Mike Schafer; All Aboard Amtrak; Railpace Company; 1991.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Thanks for the book suggestion, PRR.

Are ya trying to scare me off? I like challenges of this nature.

Just want an opinon guys. I'm almost done with the current roster of non-Heritage cars. Of the non-"Heritage" cars, I only have three types left to record. The layout I was figuring of releasing this section of the book in is something similar to Jane's Fighters, I guess. Pictures, hard numbers, and a brief description. The detailed history of these cars design and acquisition would be in a different section of the book. I'm trying to figure out how to record the "train sets", in particular the RTG/Rohr Turboliners, Talgos and Acela Express. Since they are used in almost unvarying "sets" it seems on one hand reasonable to record them as a single group of cars, but on the other hand since they are (with difficulty) separable from each other it seems like I should record each type seperately (Ex. Acela Power cars in the locomotive section, Coach cars, End Cars, Business, First, and Cafe separately in the cars section). If I put this book out, which way would you guys want it?

I'm considering each car types seperate types. For example, you have the Superliner as a basic type. Within that you have the Superliner Is and Superliner IIs. Within the Superliner IIs you have the Coach, the Sleeper, the Diner, the Sightseer Lounge, the Transition Sleeper, the Auto Train's all bedroom Deluxe Sleeper, and the Coast Starlight's Family Coach.

Second. Just want to make sure I have everything. The car types Amtrak has had built for it and run on a regular revenue basis are as follows: Amfleet I, Amfleet II, Acela Express, Talgo, Superliner I, Superliner II, Viewliner, California cars, Pacific Surfliners, and the Turboliners. Am I missing anything?

Third, I know there were some short term "experimental" trains Amtrak ran. For example, the Flexliners and the X2000s. I know a few of these, but not all of them. Does anyone know where I can find a list of each of them and when they were "experimented" with? Would you want these included in the same section, or separately?

 

[AlanB]

I'm considering each car types seperate types. For example, you have the Superliner as a basic type. Within that you have the Superliner Is and Superliner IIs. Within the Superliner IIs you have the Coach, the Sleeper, the Diner, the Sightseer Lounge, the Transition Sleeper, the Auto Train's all bedroom Deluxe Sleeper, and the Coast Starlight's Family Coach.

Technically the Kiddie coach is not a car type, it is plain and simple a coach. It was delivered as a coach, then later modified into the kiddie car. And last year it almost went back to being a full time coach, prior to Amtrak's reversing its decison to pull both the Kiddie cars and the PPC's.

 

[PerRock]

I'm considering each car types seperate types. For example, you have the Superliner as a basic type. Within that you have the Superliner Is and Superliner IIs. Within the Superliner IIs you have the Coach, the Sleeper, the Diner, the Sightseer Lounge, the Transition Sleeper, the Auto Train's all bedroom Deluxe Sleeper, and the Coast Starlight's Family Coach.

May I suggest on more sub-catagory. refurbshed. such as the Diner/Lounges, etc.

Second. Just want to make sure I have everything. The car types Amtrak has had built for it and run on a regular revenue basis are as follows: Amfleet I, Amfleet II, Acela Express, Talgo, Superliner I, Superliner II, Viewliner, California cars, Pacific Surfliners, and the Turboliners. Am I missing anything?

That looks pretty good. The Surfliner uses California cars; just painted differently. Your also forgetting the horizons, MHCs, trailer Train (AMTZ), AutoTrain carriers, Bi-levels, RDCs, SPVs, Hi-Levels (although they are technically herritage). Also i don't know if you want to make these seperate, put them under expirimental or what but there were 3 different types of Turboliners AMTK had; UA, Rohr & ANF.

Third, I know there were some short term "experimental" trains Amtrak ran. For example, the Flexliners and the X2000s. I know a few of these, but not all of them. Does anyone know where I can find a list of each of them and when they were "experimented" with? Would you want these included in the same section, or separately?

Lets see; there were:

Flexliners

X2000

ICE

the Original Talgos

Also Other stuff you might wan to find a place for is:

The Florida Fun Train

MoW equiptment

AOE

Also while digging thru Hebners looking at stuff I found these, you can look into them.

http://hebners.net/amtrak/amtODD/amtSTEAMb.jpg

http://hebners.net/amtrak/amtODD/AmtrakT.jpg

peter

LRC

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I have the Diner-Lounge. Its a Superliner I, not a Superliner II, which is why it isn't mentioned in that list.

Forgot to mention the Horizons. I already have those.

Weren't the bi-level ex-Chicago commuter cars, and thus not made for amtrak, and therefore Heritage cars?

I assume the trailer train were RoadRailers? I'm not going to do anything that detailed on their experiment in freight traffic. (Same goes for MHC, Express) I'll go into the subject in a section about bad decisions and the Glide Path to Self Insufficiency, but I'm not going to cover them as a car type. I should include the AutoRacks though.

The RDC is heritage too, isn't it?

What's an SPV?

Also, I looked into the AFT. I've seen several pictures of that engine, with that paint scheme- but no Amtrak name on it. The trolley also looks like a photochop for some reason.

 

[PerRock]

I have the Diner-Lounge. Its a Superliner I, not a Superliner II, which is why it isn't mentioned in that list.
Forgot to mention the Horizons. I already have those.

Weren't the bi-level ex-Chicago commuter cars, and thus not made for amtrak, and therefore Heritage cars?

I assume the trailer train were RoadRailers? I'm not going to do anything that detailed on their experiment in freight traffic. (Same goes for MHC, Express) I'll go into the subject in a section about bad decisions and the Glide Path to Self Insufficiency, but I'm not going to cover them as a car type. I should include the AutoRacks though.

The RDC is heritage too, isn't it?

What's an SPV?

Also, I looked into the AFT. I've seen several pictures of that engine, with that paint scheme- but no Amtrak name on it. The trolley also looks like a photochop for some reason.

Roadrailers is a form or trailer train; yes.

The SPVs is/was the amfleet version of the RDC.

I guess the problem with the "heritage" fleet is that it varies so much in words of what counts a as heritage and not.

peter

peter

 

[PRR 60]

The "SPV" was actually the SPV2000 (Self Propelled Vehicle for the year 2000) built by the Budd Company in the 1980's. It was an attempt to build a modern version of the highly successful RDC line of rail cars and used the Metroliner/Amfleet car body. Unlike the RDC cars, the SPV2000 was a huge failure. The cars were notoriously unreliable. I am not aware of any SPV2000's still in service using the internal power. Some were converted to coaches and may be still in use. Although the SPV2000 debacle was not the sole cause of the demise of the once great Budd Company, is was one of the factors.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I was under the impression Budd made the best quality of railroad equipment of the big names.

Peter, my definition of Heritage Equipment at this point is anything Amtrak did not acquire new.

 

[Eric X2000]

Third, I know there were some short term "experimental" trains Amtrak ran. For example, the Flexliners and the X2000s. I know a few of these, but not all of them. Does anyone know where I can find a list of each of them and when they were "experimented" with? Would you want these included in the same section, or separately?

I can probably help you with info on the X2000. I was involved with this train from its first test run in Sweden 1989 and I trained Amtrak's engineers and road foremen how to operate it and I was always in the cab when the train was running.

 

[caravanman]

Hi,

Because I am not that interested in the actual equipment used, I don't have much advice to offer on that aspect. However, I think it is important to think about who might buy a book, any book, to think about your target audience. Is it large enough? Why not write a chapter on line, and invite feedback?

I enjoy reading most travel writing, the human interest details of a journey, (which is not what you propose) but I find that others don't seem to get as much enjoyment from reading my written offerings, as I get from writing it, and reading other peoples. I guess that what I am saying is that to hold a readers interest requires quite a lot of literary skill..

Also, if you intend to publish it yourself, you will find no end of "encouragment" from the vanity publishing brigade, who make their livings by "guiding" would -be authors towards a great deal of expense..

Ed B)

 

[transit54]

I'd also make sure that what you're doing doesn't overlap with this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Amtrak-Mbi-Railroad-...4580&sr=8-2

I was given a copy as a gift two years ago, and it is a pretty encompassing history of Amtrak including a lot of the aspects you mention. But if you can either take it beyond what that book has to offer, or approach the subject from a different angle, I think it would be a worthwhile venture.