Download or read book The Great Railroad Revolution written by Christian Wolmar and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America was made by the railroads. The opening of the Baltimore & Ohio line -- the first American railroad -- in the 1830s sparked a national revolution in the way that people lived thanks to the speed and convenience of train travel. Promoted by visionaries and built through heroic effort, the American railroad network was bigger in every sense than Europe's, and facilitated everything from long-distance travel to commuting and transporting goods to waging war. It united far-flung parts of the country, boosted economic development, and was the catalyst for America's rise to world-power status. Every American town, great or small, aspired to be connected to a railroad and by the turn of the century, almost every American lived within easy access of a station. By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a latticework of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads and the nation started to forget them. In The Great Railroad Revolution, renowned railroad expert Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and the fall of the greatest of all American endeavors, and argues that the time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its often-overlooked rail heritage.
Download or read book History of the Railroads and Canals of the United States written by Henry Varnum Poor and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Short History of the Railroad written by Christian Wolmar and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-12-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating journey through the history of the railroad, packed with first-hand accounts of innovation, triumph, and tragedy. From the earliest steam engine to the high-speed bullet trains of today, A Short History of the Railroad reveals the hidden stories of railroad history across the world - the inspired engineering; the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the construction of the tracks; the ground-breaking innovations behind the trains that travelled along them; and the triumphs and tragedies of the people who made the railway what it is. Chart the history of the Trans-Siberian railway, the Orient Express, and Maglev trains and the impact of world events on the development of trains and the railway. Explore the pioneering railway lines that crossed continents, the key trains of each era, and the locomotives that changed the world. A riveting narrative packed with photographs, diagrams, and maps to illustrate and illuminate, this is the biography of the machines that carried us into the modern era.
Download or read book Railroads in the Old South written by Aaron W. Marrs and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-03-10 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, technology, labor, social convention, and the environment shaped their evolution. Far from seeing the Old South as backward and premodern, Marrs finds evidence of urban life, industry, and entrepreneurship throughout the region. But these signs of progress existed alongside efforts to preserve traditional ways of life. Railroads exemplified Southerners' pursuit of progress on their own terms: developing modern transportation while retaining a conservative social order. Railroads in the Old South demonstrates that a simple approach to the Old South fails to do justice to its complexity and contradictions. -- Dr. Owen Brown and Dr. Gale E. Gibson
Download or read book Railroads of the Civil War written by Michael Leavy and published by Westholme Pub Llc. This book was released on 2010 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "iron horse" became a major weapon in the first war fully dependent on railroads. Moreover railroads would escalate and prolong the war. Leavy provides a study of trains in the Civil War through photographs and a rich narrative.
Download or read book Railroads and the Transformation of China written by Elisabeth Köll and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-14 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present. China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion. The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past forty years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the PRC’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.
Download or read book A Short History of Florida Railroads written by Gregg Turner and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Florida's railroad heritage began in the 1830s amidst Native American upheaval and territorial colonization. Surpassing waterways as the primary mode of transport, the "Iron Horse" linked practically every town and city, carried tourists and locals, and ably conveyed the wealth of Florida's mines, factories, forests, groves, and farms. Nearly 175 years later, railroads still remain a dependable source of transport within the Sunshine State.
Download or read book Railroads Across North America written by Claude Wiatrowski and published by Voyageur Press. This book was released on 2007-09-15 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first steam-powered locomotives of the early nineteenth century to the high-speed commuter trains of today, the American railroad has been a great engine powering the nations growth and industry. This book celebrates the glory and grandeur of that legacy with a lavish tour of the history of the American railroad and the culture surrounding it. Generously illustrated with vintage photographs, modern images, maps, timetables, tickets, brochures, and all manner of memorabilia, this volume offers a fascinating look at the rail industrys beginnings and development, as well as its place in American history. From the might of the major rail companies and their empires to the romance of rail travel, this is the full and fabulously colorful story of the industry that moved a nation--and stirs our imaginations to this day.
Download or read book History of the Louisville Nashville Railroad written by Maury Klein and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 1972 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Story of American Railroads written by Stewart H. Holbrook and published by New York : Crown Publishers. This book was released on 1947 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The birth and development of our national railroad system, the men who built it in spite of weather, politicians, desert, and rivals; the ingenuity and inventiveness used to improve constantly devices and techniques in railroading.
Download or read book The West the Railroads Made written by Carlos A. Schwantes and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes schedule of the California Zephyr, and brief comments about points of interest along the route from Chicago to San Francisco.
Download or read book The Railway Journey written by Wolfgang Schivelbusch and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of constant technological change upon our perception of the world is so pervasive as to have become a commonplace of modern society. But this was not always the case; as Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out in this fascinating study, our adaptation to technological change—the development of our modern, industrialized consciousness—was very much a learned behavior. In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch examines the origins of this industrialized consciousness by exploring the reaction in the nineteenth century to the first dramatic avatar of technological change, the railroad. In a highly original and engaging fashion, Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed, and risk were altered by railway travel. As a history of the surprising ways in which technology and culture interact, this book covers a wide range of topics, including the changing perception of landscapes, the death of conversation while traveling, the problematic nature of the railway compartment, the space of glass architecture, the pathology of the railway journey, industrial fatigue and the history of shock, and the railroad and the city. Belonging to a distinguished European tradition of critical sociology best exemplified by the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, The Railway Journey is anchored in rich empirical data and full of striking insights about railway travel, the industrial revolution, and technological change. Now updated with a new preface, The Railway Journey is an invaluable resource for readers interested in nineteenth-century culture and technology and the prehistory of modern media and digitalization.
Download or read book The Train and the Telegraph written by Benjamin Sidney Michael Schwantes and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complicating the existing scholarship by demonstrating that the railroad and telegraph in the United States were uneasy partners at best—and more often outright antagonists—throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, The Train and the Telegraph will appeal to scholars of communication, transportation, and American business history and political economy, as well as to enthusiasts of the nineteenth-century American railroad industry.
Download or read book Regional Railroads of the Midwest written by Steve Glischinksi and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Railroads and the American People written by H. Roger Grant and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Railroads and the American People is a sparkling paean to American railroading by one of its finest historians.
Download or read book The Men Who Loved Trains written by Rush Loving and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-21 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning account of a crisis in railroad history: “This absorbing book takes you on an entertaining ride.” —Chicago Tribune A saga about one of the oldest and most romantic enterprises in the land—America’s railroads—The Men Who Loved Trains introduces the chieftains who have run the railroads, both those who set about grabbing power and big salaries for themselves, and others who truly loved the industry. As a journalist and associate editor of Fortune magazine who covered the demise of Penn Central and the creation of Conrail, Rush Loving often had a front-row seat to the foibles and follies of this group of men. He uncovers intrigue, greed, lust for power, boardroom battles, and takeover wars and turns them into a page-turning story. He recounts how the chairman of CSX Corporation, who later became George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary, managed to make millions for himself while his company drifted in chaos. Yet there were also those who loved trains and railroading—and who played key roles in reshaping transportation in the northeastern United States. This book will delight not only the rail fan, but anyone interested in American business and history. Includes photographs
Download or read book A Journey into Florida Railroad History written by Gregg M. Turner and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2012-03-25 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is safe to say that without railroads, Florida wouldn't be what it is today. Railroads connected the state's important cities and towns, conquered the peninsula's vast and seemingly impenetrable interior, ushered in untold numbers of settlers and tourists, and conveyed to market--faster than any previous means of transportation--the myriad products of Florida's mines, forests, factories, farms, and groves. Gregg Turner traces the long, slow development of Florida railroads, from the first tentative lines in the 1830s, through the boom of the 1880s, to the maturity of the railroad system in the 1920s. At the end of that decade nearly 6,000 miles of labyrinthine track covered the state. Turner also examines the decline of the industry, as the automobile rose to prominence in American culture and lines were abandoned or sold for hiking trails and green spaces. Meticulously researched and richly illustrated--including many never-before-published images--A Journey into Florida Railroad History is a comprehensive, authoritative history of the subject. Written by one of the nation's foremost authorities on Florida railroads, it explores all the key players and companies, and every significant period of development. This engaging and lively story will be savored and enjoyed by generations to come.
