The Men Who Loved Trains is a history of the Penn Central and the 70s and 80s meltdown of America’s eastern railroads. While dominated by the Penn Central in the beginning, it really is a history of Conrail that beautifully tells its pre-history and what happened after. It’s truly a delight and a page turner, despite being somewhat of a corporate history. It was a great book to read after finishing David Alff’s The Northeast Corridor. I regretfully leave my time reading The Men Who Loved Trains with a newfound respect for the New York Central, and wish Al Perlman was around running railroads today.

I was originally loaned this book in April of 2023 by Jay, but I never made it past the first couple chapters. That was no fault of the book, I was bad at reading then. I bought a copy for myself a couple months ago and finally read the whole thing.