I experienced the sudden giddy freedom of the traveler, who by the simple expedient of climbing aboard leaves at once his workaday cares behind. It seemed so simple now: farewell to friends, just two steps up, all the way to your left, stow your luggage, find your seat, and for six weeks everything would follow from there.
Click here for more information or to order this book on-line.
$19.95 / ISBN 0-945575-40-8
Published by:
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2225, USA
a division of
Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
708 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, USA
Here are comments from the cover pages of the book:
"Trains were woven into the lives of several generations of Americans. Men and women left home by train, took their honeymoon by train, changed jobs and towns and sought their fortune by train, went off to war and returned by train, and came home again by train to bury their parents. Today, when airplanes and automobiles have allowed us to travel in ways our parents never could, this county doesn't seem as exotic, from end to end, as it once did. I wondered: is it different seen by train? So I set out to see." ---- from Booked on the Morning Train
"Scheer brings to life rail travel in modern America, and he has packed his gracefully written story with snippets of railroad history that are accurate, varied and fascinating. Booked on the Morning Train is a book you do not want to end." ---- H. Roger Grant, editor, Railroad History, Railway & Locomotive Historical Society.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to catch a passing train and follow wherever it led, climb aboard with George Scheer.
In a time of super-saver plane fares, midair traffic jams, and bomb-sniffing dogs at airports, he decided to see what remained of a different kind of travel.
He went looking on America's passenger railways.
Booked on the Morning Train is the story of a month and a half on the rails on Amtrak, following the routes of famous American trains -- from the heat and torpor of New Orleans to the ice and snow of Montana, from New York to San Francisco, and all points in between.
Here you'll find a different kind of traveler -- a different kind of trip: people drawn to trains by nostalgia, or fear, or hope, or by the promise of a journey where the going is as important as the getting there.
Come and meet them!
Meet John Madden, cigar clamped in his teeth, wisecracking his way to the next "Game of the Week." Meet Glenn Paquin, a Pueblo Indian who gave up a fast-track job to sell silver and turquoise from a blanket on the ground. Meet a drunken, disabled Vietnam veteran named Chuck, heading west for a brain operation that could kill or cure him. Meet them all.
Forget your clocks and calendars. Book a seat on the morning train with George Scheer. Come live by train time!
In the tradition of great travel writing like that of Paul Theroux and John Steinbeck, George Scheer's Booked on the Morning Train" offers a glimpse at the loneliness and freedom of the solitary traveler -- and a ride deep into the heart and soul of the American experience.
About the author:
George F. Scheer III was born in North Carolina in 1952 and graduated from Boston University. He has traveled widely and is the author of travel guides to North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. He works as a radio announcer with National Public Radio affiliate WUNC, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he hosts a late-night jazz program. He and his wife live in Chapel Hill.
