Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America

This is an inside account of the writer riding the Zephyr more than once. A lot of behind the scenes info and interviews with the crew. This is the Amtrak Zephyr and not the original or Rio Grande Zephyr.

I wanted to use this book as a guide for planning my own cross-country trip on the Zephyr. It's a wonderful book if you want to know the history of railroad depots and the ups-and-downs of passenger train history.But if waiting to see what's outside the the train windows, the book is a big disappointment. 150 pages into the book, Mr. Kisor has barely looked out the window. His book is a catalogue of all the minutia that occurs during his trip, from his first conversations with the chef and the steward all the way to the ramblings of drunken passengers. Mr. Kisor seems extremely people-oriented, which I am not criticising; I just would have liked more descriptions of the passing countryside to get a sense of Americana seen from passenger trains.Kisor also seems to focus too much on unpleasant, uncelebrated side of train travel. "The second coach stank of stale farts, bodily crevices and morning breath..." His reporter's sense of detail is sometimes too keen; he reports on everything around him with impeccable accuracy, whether pleasant or unpleasant. While everyone has experienced cantankerous passengers and garrulous bores, we don't really want them jumping from the pages of a book to spoil our ride. There were sections of this book that made me think twice about scheduling a cross-country trip. If Kisor's purpose was to celebrate the passenger railroads and encourage people to ride them, he might consider trading more uplifting paragraphs for these truthful, but depressing, episodes.All in all, it is still a good read if you want well researched train history mingled with a hefty set of personal anecdotes. But please, Mr. Kisor, the next time you ride the Zephyr, look out the window!

I read this book a few years ago, and decided to buy it now. Although the book is quite a few years old now, the information in it is still very entertaining. It was fun to get a first-person account of train travel on the California Zephyr. I wish Kisor had stayed more with his experiences with the train trips themselves rather than digressing every few pages to other topics of social commentary, it was still a fun good read.

If you are into train travel, this is a wonderful book. The writer, in several of the passages, clearly show that he is a bit of a snob towards those who are in coach. However, his vivid prose is second to none.

Ever want to ride the California Zephyr from Chicago to California? Here's what it's like to take that multi day train ride with many insights that usual traveler never gets to see.

An entertaining read. Sometime the author gets "off track" from the main theme, but all in all I recommend this book for a glimpse into the last days of the golden era of passenger railroading.

I found that it. Only had a few pages of photos!The description on the Amazon web site did notImply. The texts importance.I saw only a few views from the windowsDuring a trip!

This is a book that I read when it first came out. Ordered it here to send to a friend planning to take the trip. He enjoyed it. Enjoyed the book more that the trip, though.