Download or read book Boston in Transit written by Steven Beaucher and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A richly illustrated story of public transit in one of America’s most historic cities, from public ferry and horse-drawn carriage to the MBTA. A lively tour of public transportation in Boston over the years, Boston in Transit maps the complete history of the modes of transportation that have kept the city moving and expanding since its founding in 1630—from the simple ferry serving an English settlement to the expansive network of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, or MBTA. The story of public transit in Boston—once dubbed the Hub of the Universe—is a journey through the history of the American metropolis. With a remarkable collection of maps and architectural and engineering drawings at hand, Steven Beaucher launches his account from the landing where English colonists established that first ferry, carrying passengers between what is now Boston’s North End and Charlestown—and sparing them what had been a two-day walk around Boston Harbor. In the 1700s, horse-drawn coaches appeared on the scene, connecting Boston and Cambridge, with the bigger, better Omnibus soon to follow. From horse-drawn coaches, horse-drawn railways evolved, making way for the electric streetcar networks that allowed the city’s early suburbs to sprout—culminating in the multimodal, regional public transportation network in place in Boston today. With photographs, brochures, pamphlets, guidebooks, timetables, and tickets, Boston in Transit creates a complete picture of the everyday experience of public transportation through the centuries. At once a practical reference, local history, and travelogue, this book will be cherished by armchair tourists, day-trippers, and serious travelers alike.

Download or read book Boston s Red Line written by Frank Cheney and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Boston Elevated Railway Company broke ground for the Cambridge Subway in May 1909, its intention was to provide the cities of Boston and Cambridge with the finest and most efficient rapid-transit system of the time. Other cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, paid close attention, adopting many of the Cambridge Subway's revolutionary design features. The subway became known as the Red Line and eventually extended from Cambridge across the Charles River through Boston, serving Dorchester, Braintree, and Mattapan. Boston's Red Line: Bridging the Charles from Alewife to Braintree details one of Boston's oldest and busiest subway lines. This nostalgic collection of vintage photographs documents the line's construction and its engineers and leaders, such as Maj. Gen. William A. Bancroft, mayor of Cambridge and president of the Boston Elevated Railway Company. In these pages, watch as crews break ground in Harvard and Andrew Squares and see the 1929 trolleys that replaced Mattapan's commuter train service. Through exciting, historic photographs, Boston's Red Line: Bridging the Charles from Alewife to Braintree tells the fascinating story of how the Crimson City's subway became the modern Red Line, taking passengers beneath the streets of Boston to landmarks such as Harvard Square, Massachusetts General Hospital, historic Park Street, and the Longfellow Bridge.

Download or read book When Boston Rode the EL written by Frank Cheney and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2000-08-09 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Boston Elevated Railway broke ground in 1899 for a new transit service that opened in 1901, providing a seven-mile elevated railway that connected Dudley Street Station in Roxbury and Sullivan Square Station in Charlestown, two huge multilevel terminals. When the EL, as it was popularly known, opened for service, it provided an unencumbered route high above the surging traffic of Boston, until it went underground through the city. The new trains of the EL were elegant coaches of African mahogany, bronze hardware, plush upholstered seats, plate glass windows, and exteriors of aurora red with silver gilt striping and slate grey roofs. They stopped at ten equally distinguished train stations, designed by the noted architect Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow. All of this elegance, let alone convenience, could be had for the price of a five-cent ticket. The popularity of the EL was instantaneous. The railway continued to provide transportation service high above Bostons streets until 1987, when it was unfortunately ended after 86 years of elevated operation. Today, the squealing wheels of the Elevated trains, the rocking coaches, the fascinating views, and the fanciful copper-roofed stations of the line are a missing part of the character of Boston, when one could ride high above the city for a nickel.

Download or read book Metropolitan Railways written by William D. Middleton and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Metropolitan Railways" is a large-scale, illustrated volume that deals with the growth and development of urban rail transit systems in North America.

Download or read book Moving the Masses written by Charles W. Cheape and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The development of public transit is an integral part of both business and urban history in late nineteenth-century America. The author begins this study in 1880, when public transportation in large American cities was provided by numerous, competing horse-car companies with little or no public control of operation. By 1912, when the study concludes, a monopoly in each city operated a coordinated network of electric-powered streetcars and, in the largest cities, subways, which were regulated by city and state agencies. The history of transit development reflects two dominant themes: the constant pressure of rapid growth in city population and area and the requirements of the technology developed to service that growth. The case studies here include three of the four cites that had rapid transit during this period. Each case study examines, first, the mechanization of surface lines and, second, the implementation of rapid transit. New York requires an additional chapter on steam-powered, elevated railroads, for early population growth there required rapid transit before the invention of electric technology. Urban transit enterprise is viewed within a clear and familiar pattern of evolution--the pattern of the last half of the nineteenth century, when industries with expanding markets and complex, costly processes of production and distribution adopted new strategy and structure, administered by a new class of professional managers.

Download or read book Electric Railways and Tramways Their Construction and Operation written by Philip Dawson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly illustrated 1897 handbook by a leading electrical engineer offers unique insights into the earliest days of electric locomotion.

Download or read book The Great Railway Bazaar written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author recounts his epic journey across Europe and Asia in this international bestselling classic of travel literature: “Compulsive reading” (Graham Greene). In 1973, Paul Theroux embarked on a four-month journey by train from the United Kingdom through Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In The Great Railway Bazaar, he records in vivid detail and penetrating insight the many fascinating incidents, adventures, and encounters of his grand, intercontinental tour. Asia's fabled trains—the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express—are the stars of a journey that takes Theroux on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.

Download or read book True Rapid Transit written by Joe Vincent Meigs and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the possibilities of establishing a true rapid transit system and how it can be achieved. The author discusses the benefits of such a system and provides an in-depth analysis of the current state of public transportation. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book The Image of the City written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1964-06-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

Download or read book Railroad Gazette written by and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 982 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Race Underground written by Doug Most and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and New York grew more congested, the streets became clogged with plodding, horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of 1888 crippled the entire northeast, a solution had to be found. Two brothers from one of the nation's great families-Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York-pursued the dream of his city digging America's first subway, and the great race was on. The competition between Boston and New York played out in an era not unlike our own, one of economic upheaval, life-changing innovations, class warfare, bitter political tensions, and the question of America's place in the world.The Race Underground is peopled with the famous, like Boss Tweed, Grover Cleveland and Thomas Edison, and the not-so-famous, from brilliant engineers to the countless "sandhogs" who shoveled, hoisted and blasted their way into the earth's crust, sometimes losing their lives in the construction of the tunnels. Doug Most chronicles the science of the subway, looks at the centuries of fears people overcame about traveling underground and tells a story as exciting as any ever ripped from the pages of U.S. history. The Race Underground is a great American saga of two rival American cities, their rich, powerful and sometimes corrupt interests, and an invention that changed the lives of millions.

Download or read book Rails Across Canada written by Tom Murray and published by Voyageur Press. This book was released on 2011-03-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few stories in the annals of railroading are as compelling as the construction, evolution, and astounding successes of the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways. This sprawling volume combines two of Voyageur Press' most successful Railroad Color History titles into one volume taking in the grand scope of both railroads. Author Tom Murray presents fastidiously researched and concisely presented histories of each railroad, along with more than 300 photographs, including rare archival black-and-white images and modern and period color photography sourced from national archives and private collections.

Download or read book Chicago Trolleys written by David Sadowski and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chicago's extensive transit system first started in 1859, when horsecars ran on rails in city streets. Cable cars and electric streetcars came next. Where new trolley car lines were built, people, businesses, and neighborhoods followed. Chicago quickly became a world-class city. At its peak, Chicago had over 3,000 streetcars and 1,000 miles of track--the largest such system in the world. By the 1930s, there were also streamlined trolleys and trolley buses on rubber tires. Some parts of Chicago's famous "L" system also used trolley wire instead of a third rail. Trolley cars once took people from the Loop to such faraway places as Aurora, Elgin, Milwaukee, and South Bend. A few still run today.

Download or read book The Train on the Beach written by William Lieberman and published by Booklocker.com. This book was released on 2017-08-20 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of railroads in the Town of Winthrop, Massachusetts and its neighboring communities is recounted. Details are provided about the railroads' routes, equipment, service, and corporate structures. Included is a description of how these railroads fostered the development of Boston's Inner North Shore.

Download or read book Automatic Train Control in Rail Rapid Transit written by United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Beneath the Streets of Boston written by and published by David R. Godine Publisher. This book was released on 2005 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beckoning readers to explore the territory beneath Boston's streets, Joe McKendry explores a century-old world when Beantown designed and created the country's first subway. In stunning artwork and through a fascinating narrative, you will enter the subterranean realm of workers who dug miles of tunnels by hand. Using pick and shovels to create new routes, you'll discover how these workers burrowed deep below Boston Harbor, under Beacon Hill and the Old State House, and built the Longfellow Bridge to carry the trains over the Charles River to the center of Cambridge. You'll read lively first-hand accounts of the turn-of-the-century public's perception of the underground public transportation, including their fears (expressed fantastically through the gruesome image of a fanged and tentacled "subway microbe"), and learn how the system served as a model for the rest of the country in its ability to relieve traffic, mitigate congestion (which was even more severe a hundred years ago than today) and get people anywhere they wanted to go for only a nickel.

Download or read book Dark Tide written by Stephen Puleo and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new 100th anniversary edition of the only adult book on one of the odder disasters in US history—and the greed, disregard for poor immigrants, and lack of safety standards that led to it. Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters were playing cards in Boston’s North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window—“Oh my God!” he shouted to the other men, “Run!” A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston’s waterfront, disgorging its contents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outset traveled at 35 miles an hour. It demolished wooden homes, even the brick fire station. The number of dead wasn’t known for days. It would be years before a landmark court battle determined who was responsible for the disaster.