Life on the Q
Central Standard, A Time, A Place, A Family, by Patrick Irelan. University of Iowa Press, 2002. 176 pp. $24.95 hardbound

Reviewed by Kevin P. Keefe, associate publisher and former editor of Trains

The railroad has been effectively marginalized in American life. At this point in history, it would probably surprise anyone under age 50 to know there was once was a time when everyone, it seemed, had a connection with railroading. Yet for much of the last century, trains were a pervasive presence in millions of lives. If you didn’t work for the railroad, then you were close to someone who did. Perhaps it was a father, or an uncle, or a grandfather. Or, certainly, a neighbor or a friend. As late as 1955, U.S. railroads employed 1.2 million workers—enough people to make an impact on many millions more.

This helps explain the appeal of Central Standard. In a collection of 24 highly personal essays, Patrick Irelan tells the story of his own railroad clan and how it evolved and occasionally prospered through the mid-20th century. Readers with ties to the Midwest might see something of themselves in these crisply written stories of the Irelans: their persistent attempts to succeed at farming, their methods of coping with hard times, the way the old-timers fight over the check at the local diner, and the omnipresent railroad in their lives …