This is a good book to find out the railroads in the northeastern part of the United States merged together to become Penn Central. Penn Central foundred and became a government owned entity named Conrail (Consolidated Rail Corporation). Eventually Conrail was split up and taken over by CSX (successor to the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad) and Norfolk Southern (successor to the Norfolk and Western Railroad. Although the author never really describes it this way, a process that really began in the 1930's when the the two strongest Poconontas rairoads (C & O and the N & W) were urged to separately merge with the stongest eastern railroads, the New York Central and the Pennsylvania. Rush Loving is vrey good in tracking down the human element in all of this, not as good at seeing the sociological side of the story. But it is a story that needed to be written. I have not followed the story over the years as well as I should have, and Rush puts it all together quite well. ( )