In Chapter 47 and Chapter 48, you learned how to use the header and link classes to make a list of railroad cars. The work was difficult, however, so you learn, in this chapter, how to package what you have done for reuse by exploiting C++'s template mechanism. Once you have defined template classes for lists, it is easy to create new lists, and you can forget about all the detail you have to struggle through to understand lists and templates.

Note, however, that the definition of template classes is merely illustrated with the use of lists. The template mechanism is a general feature of C++ with wide applicability.