“American Railroads. Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century.” By Robert E. Gallamore and John R. Meyer. Harvard University Press, 2014. Available from Amazon for $31.49 as an eBook and $49.50 for hardcover.
The two authors (Meyer died in 2009) are (or were) PhD economists. Meyer was on faculty at Harvard. He served as an advisor to Gallamore as the later wrote his PhD dissertation. The subject of the dissertation was an evaluation of parallel rail mergers. (They lessened competition and didn’t produce the savings projected.) Both Gallamore and Meyer had railroad industry experience with the Union Pacific.
So keep in mind that this is a book focused on economics. Primarily the economics of railroading in the US and the futile, counterproductive attempts by various governments to alter economic reality though laws and regulations. The Janney coupler and air brake do get mentioned, but the focus is on such things as Ramsey Pricing, Marginal Cost, Value of Service Pricing, Demand-Based Pricing, and personal income redistribution by the government to politically favored groups though its control of rail rates. Given that, it does provide a great historical record of US railroads in the 20th Century. It is a great historical record because, through its focus on economics, it gives an explanation of why the things that happened did happen. Economic regulation put the US railroads in a “Survival Mode” in which they could not finance improvements or add capacity. Those of us who live in the United States are still paying the price for that today.
Here’s an excerpt:
“A central theme of this book is that railroads, throughout their history, were so important to the US economy that politicians could not leave them alone, and when governments did intervene in trans