It’s approximately 3,000 miles from the east coast of America to the west, about 5 times the distance from Lands End to John O’Groats. Go back 150 years or so to the early days of the USA, and it was pretty much an insurmountable distance. That is, until the advent of the railway. Given America’s history with the railroad it seems a crying shame that only about 10% of rail journeys nowadays are made by passengers – all the rest is freight. In writing All Gone to Look for America, Peter Millar has given us a beer- and music-fuelled insight into the America of today as seen from the windows of the Hiawatha, the California Zephyr and the Empire Builder, grand old dames of the American railroad.
