Product Description

In the world of railway enthusiasts and modelers, freight carriers are every bit as technically involved and evocative as engines and cabooses. This color gallery pictures and describes, well, a trainload of "rolling stock"--boxcars, flatcars, hoppers, gondolas, tank cars, auto-rack transports and others--representing a variety of railways in action around the nation. Engines may provide the power and cabooses the sentimetal value, but without that which comes in between, both are moot.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #334273 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Mike Schafer has written several rail-related books for MBI, including Classic American Streamliners, Streamliner Memories, Roller Coasters, Caboose, and Classic American Railroads.

Customer Reviews

Neither engine nor caboose, but all parts in between
Like many others, as a child I was fascinated by trains, an interest I recently discovered. Unlike many other railroad enthusiasts, my interest was not primarily on the locomotives, nor the cabooses at the end. It was the freight cars that fascinated me, in their variety of types and colors.

This book gives a very good overview of railroad freight cars. There is discussion about the earliest freight cars of any type, as well as the history and usage of the various types and some insight in to modern freight trains. It has many interesting notes about the design and construction of these cars, in the past and the present, but stops short of getting mired in a lot of details that are likely to bore many readers.

The outstanding photographs are what really make this book, including some of the details revealed in the captions. I wish there were more of them - a lot more - and was tempted to give it a rating of one less star for that reason, but for the price of this book vs. the quality of the printing and binding, such a complaint is not really justified. If trains interest you at all, buy this book!

A Nice, Simple Survey
This book is a simple one that seeks to do no more than to introduce readers to the common varieties of freight cars found on the railways and it does a commendable job of doing that. After briefly discussing the origins of freight trains themselves, we are taken on a tour of the different types of cars. The development of each is examined and then their usage through the 19th and 20th centuries in the US is given. These are not in depth treatments but they are very adequate for an introduction.

Useful for Pro and Newbie Alike
Is it a gondola that carries coal, isn't it? I've heard them called "hoppers" too. But that's only for grain, isn't it? Answers: (1) rarely; (2) hoppers (open-top) are not gondolas, and most coal is carried in them. (3) Hoppers (covered) carry more than just grain.

This is a wonderful book of pictures that will prove interesting to the beginner and fun for the aficianado. FREIGHT TRAIN CARS covers its subject very well, in essence a "field guide" to American freight cars including those that are fairly rare (coil car) and those that are growing obsolecent (boxcars). The pictures are old enough to show some marvelous B&W detail, but new enough to show the newer shipping modes like shipping "cubes" (which are boxes but not perfectly cubical, and most world trade depends on them, stacked on ships and railcars as high as possible).

This may not have been the intention back in the early Nineties when this book was first produced, but FREIGHT TRAIN CARS is also a riot of colorful "fallen flags" (Railfan talk for rail companies that have gone out of business or merged into a "megasystem").

Highly recommended. There are other books, but for the money and IMHO, this is the one to go for, especially if you can get a good clean used copy inexpensively. Signed, Al Smalling, proud to be called "Railfan."