Kategoria BISAC: Transportation >> Railroads - History

After the Civil War, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad took the lead among southern railroads in developing rail systems and organizing transcontinental travel. Through two world wars, federal government control, internal crises, external dissension, the Depression, and the great Ohio River flood of 1937, the L&N Railroad remained one of the country's most efficient lines. It is a southern institution and a railroad buff's dream. When eminent railroad historian Maury Klein's definitive History of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad was first published in 1972, it quickly became one...

People interested in the steam engine are well catered for by an enormous variety of books, but these deal almost entirely with transport. The stationary steam engine has been much neglected in modern literature and there is very little available to tell us about the largest and most varied aspects of the use of steam power: how for instance it was put to pumping out mines in the reign of Queen Anne and to providing domestic water supplies in London not long after. All these installations were designed as beam engines; in other words, they had a rocking beam interposed between the piston...

"A great yarn . . . Lustgarten] also accomplishes something more valuable: He provides insight into the seat-of-the-pants nature of many of China's massive schemes."--The Washington Post Book World

When the "sky train" to Tibet opened in 2006, the Chinese government fulfilled a fifty-year plan first envisioned by Mao Zedong. As China grew into an economic power, the railway had become an imperative, a critical component of China's breakneck expansion and the final maneuver in strengthening the country's grip over this last frontier.

In China's Great...

A standard track gauge--the distance between the two rails--enables connecting railway lines to exchange traffic. But despite the benefits of standardization, early North American railways used six different gauges extensively, and even today breaks of gauge at national borders and within such countries as India and Australia are expensive burdens on commerce. In Tracks across Continents, Paths through History, Douglas J. Puffert offers a global history of railway track gauge, examining early choices and the dynamic process of diversity and standardization that resulted.

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At one point in time, no place in Iowa was more than a few miles from an active line of rail track. In this splendid companion volume to Steel Trails of Hawkeyeland (IUP, 2005), H. Roger Grant and Don L. Hofsommer explore the pivotal role that railroads played in the urban development of the state as well as the symbiotic relationship Iowa and its rails shared. With more than 400 black-and-white photographs, a solid inventory of depots and locations, and new information that is sure to impress even the most well-versed railfan, this detailed history of the state's railroads-including the...

Aaron W. Marrs challenges the accepted understanding of economic and industrial growth in antebellum America with this original study of the history of the railroad in the Old South.

Drawing from both familiar and overlooked sources, such as the personal diaries of Southern travelers, papers and letters from civil engineers, corporate records, and contemporary newspaper accounts, Marrs skillfully expands on the conventional business histories that have characterized scholarship in this field. He situates railroads in the fullness of antebellum life, examining how slavery,...

This comprehensive history of North American railroad electrification has been out of print for many years. Now, Indiana University Press is proud to announce its return in an new, updated second edition.

For most of the first half of the 20th century the United States led the way in railroad electrification. Before the outbreak of World War II, the country had some 2,400 route-miles and more than 6,300 track-miles operating under electric power, far more than any other nation and more than 20 percent of the world's total. In almost every instance, electrification was a huge success....

This captivating book takes readers on an illustrated tour of the black railroad experience from slavery to Amtrak. With almost 200 images--many never before published--Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., examines the significant contributions of African Americans to the building, maintenance, operation, and profitability of the American railway system.

The history of American railroads, Kornweibel makes clear, cannot be separated from African American history. For over a century, railroading provided the most important industrial occupation for blacks. Brakemen, firemen, porters, chefs,...

When the Louisville and Nashville Railroad was founded in 1850, it was the first major railroad in the west, and the only one headquartered in Kentucky. In the twentieth century, the L&N grew into one of the nation's major rail systems, reaching from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River Valley and down to Florida and the Gulf Coast. Kincaid Herr worked for the Louisville and Nashville for more than forty years, and this book originated as a series of articles that he wrote for L&N Magazine between 1939 and 1942. After various printings through the 1940s and '50s, this fifth edition,...

The iconic shape of George and Robert Stephenson's Rocket, as unveiled to the world in 1829, is arguably the most enduring silhouette in railway history. But why was Rocket that special, curious, shape? And why does the surviving locomotive, a star exhibit at London's Science Museum, look so unlike the striking yellow image associated with the Rocket today?

Rocket was built to take part in The Rainhill Trials, the competition to find a locomotive design to pull trains on the world's first passenger line, the Liverpool and Manchester. The trials caught the public's imagination and its...