Yet there isn t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking....
Yet there isn t a train I wouldn t take,
No matter where it s going.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Travel"

"Yet there isn t a train I wouldn t take" is a collection of stories about favorite train journeys by an inveterate railway enthusiast and train traveler. A half century career as an engineer, Naval officer, and university administrator took Bill Middleton to almost every part of the globe, and everywhere he took with him an abiding interest in railways, and a notebook and camera to record his...

The Jewett Car Company was born in Akron, Ohio, in the heyday of the electric railway boom in the 1890s. The company gained an excellent reputation for its elegant, well-built wooden cars for street railway companies, interurban lines, and rapid transit service. Cities large and small used Jewett cars. Many interurban lines employed the graceful, arch-windowed, wood interurban that Jewett was famous for. Competition from automobiles and from larger car builders such as J. G. Brill and the St. Louis Car Company signaled the beginning of the end for Jewett. The company was offered the...

Strohl examines the evolving network of high speed railway passenger trains in Western Europe. The purpose of the study, in addition to placing high speed train networks in a geographic and economic context, is to introduce the American reader to the evolving system of passenger trains in Europe toward evaluating their feasibility for high-density areas of the U.S. and Canada. Beginning with some general concepts of railway economics, planning, construction, and operation, the author goes on to detail high speed rail networks in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Spain, with...

As the first study to document the Baghdad Railway construction, rather than the rhetoric surrounding it, this work challenges nearly a century of scholarship on German imperialism and Ottoman decline--scholarship that has too often hinged on the alleged Great Power victimization of the Ottoman Empire. McMurray unearths a fascinating, intercultural dimension of the railway and provides a comprehensive, detailed account of the Ottoman contribution. His work denies the German character of the railway by showing it to be an exclusively Ottoman enterprise designed by German engineers, funded...

For much of the postwar era, French society had a contradictory view of passenger trains, scorning them as quaint anachronisms on the one hand, yet also fearing their economic and social impact. All this changed with the introduction of the famed Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) between Paris and Lyon in the early 1980s. In vivid detail, Meunier describes the political, economic, and social factors that both helped and hindered the development of the world's fastest, most technologically advanced train.

The present-day enthusiasm in France for high-speed rail travel dates only to the...

American railroads were the Internet of the 19th century. The whole country opened up. Industry exploded. Numerous fortunes were made, lost, and sometimes made again. Railroads had a profound impact on technology, business, politics, and culture. This reference guide includes seven essays which provide historical overview and detailed examinations of critical aspects of the railroads. Also included are 15 in-depth biographies of persons who greatly influenced the history of the rails; 23 primary documents that illustrate the story with the participants' own words; 10 photos; a timeline;...

The image of the shinkansen - or 'bullet train' - passing Mount Fuji is one of the most renowned images of modern Japan. Yet, despite its international reputation for speed and punctuality, little is understood about what makes it work so well and what its impact is.

This is a comprehensive account of the history of the shinkansen, from its planning during the Pacific War, to its launch in 1964 and subsequent development. It goes on to analyze the reasons behind the bullet train's success, and demonstrates how it went from being simply a high-speed rail network to attaining the...

But major rail lines did not merge in Kansas City by happenstance. In this classic urban study, Glaab illustrates the crucial role entrepreneurship and boosterism played in determining...

Nowhere better than in the history of its railroads is the growth of the Old West revealed, and for Colorado the development of the Denver and Rio Grande Western epitomizes the changes that took place between 1870 and the present. Robert G. Athearn's intimate knowledge of the West has enabled him to write a gripping account of the famous narrow-gauge Denver and Rio Grande as it inched its way south, then turned west into the Rockies. By f1883 it had joined with the Rio Grande Western to become Colorado's only line across the mountains. The Dotsero Cutoff and the six-mile Moffat Tunnel put...