Download or read book Steel Trails of Hawkeyeland written by Don L. Hofsommer and published by . This book was released on 2005-06-29 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully illustrated survey of Iowa's railroad experience.
Download or read book Steel Trails of Hawkeyeland written by Don L. Hofsommer and published by . This book was released on 2005-06-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully illustrated survey of Iowa's railroad experience.
Download or read book Railroaders without Borders written by H. Roger Grant and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over 25 years, the creatively led Railroad Development Corporation (RDC) has rejuvenated a series of down-and-out and even defunct railroads. Launched in 1987 by Henry Posner III, this investment and management company has demonstrated that it is possible both to have a conscience and to earn a profit in today's railroad industry. With ventures on four continents, RDC has created an admirable record of long-term commitments, respect for local cultures, and protection of the public interest. H. Roger Grant presents a firsthand look at this unique business operation and its triumphs and disappointments.
Download or read book The Indiana Rail Road Company Revised and Expanded Edition written by Christopher Rund and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indiana Rail Road Company is a story of extraordinary success among the scores of independent short line and regional railroads spawned in the wake of railroad deregulation. Christopher Rund chronicles the development of the company from its origins as part of America's first land grant railroad, the Illinois Central, through the political and financial juggling required by entrepreneur Tom Hoback to purchase the line when it fell into disrepair. Reborn as a robust, profitable carrier, the INRD has become a model for the new American regional railroad. This revised edition, with a new foreword by acclaimed author Fred Frailey and four new chapters, brings readers up to date on Tom Hoback's amazing railroad adventure.
Download or read book Iowa s Railroads written by H. Roger Grant and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive history of the railroads of Iowa, featuring over four hundred black-and-white photographs. 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 four hundred 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 Chicago & North Western, Cedar Rapids & Iowa City, and the Iowa Northern—will be an essential reference for railroad fans and historians, artists, and model railroad builders. “Iowa’s Railroads is a solid visual introduction to the railroad history of the state.” —Industrial Archeology “With more than 400 black and white photographs, an inventory of depots and locations, and new information that will please railroad fans, [Iowa’s Railroads] will be an essential reference for historians, fans, and model railroad builders.” —Abstracts of Public Administration, Development, and Environment,2010 “This excellent volume is sure to appeal to anyone with an interest in Midwest railway history.” —The Michigan Railfan, March-April 2010 “Grant and Hofsommer, both native Iowans and respected railroad historians, have mined a wide variety of public and private photo collections, and the result is a visual feast of Iowa’s railroad experience.” —The Annals of Iowa, 69, Number 2
Download or read book The Iron Road in the Prairie State written by Simon Cordery and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-20 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1836, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas agreed on one thing: Illinois needed railroads. Over the next fifty years, the state became the nation's railroad hub, with Chicago at its center. Speculators, greed, growth, and regulation followed as the railroad industry consumed unprecedented amounts of capital and labor. A nationwide market resulted, and the Windy City became the site of opportunities and challenges that remain to this day. In this first-of-its-kind history, full of entertaining anecdotes and colorful characters, Simon Cordery describes the explosive growth of Illinois railroads and its impact on America. Cordery shows how railroading in Illinois influenced railroad financing, the creation of a national economy, and government regulation of business. Cordery's masterful chronicle of rail development in Illinois from 1837 to 2010 reveals how the state's expanding railroads became the foundation of the nation's rail network.
Download or read book The Rock Island Line written by Bill Marvel and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the rich history of the legendary railroad that spanned the American Midwest in this beautifully illustrated volume. Beginning operations in the mid-nineteenth century, the Rock Island Line served farms and small-town America for more than 140 years. One of the earliest railroads to build westward from Chicago, it was the first to span the Mississippi, advancing the frontier, bringing settlers into the West, and hauling their crops to market. Rock Island’s celebrated Rocket passenger trains also set a standard for speed and service, with suburban runs as familiar to Windy City commuters as the Loop. For most of its existence, the Rock battled competitors much larger and richer than itself. When it finally succumbed, the result was one of the largest business bankruptcies ever. Today, as its engines and stock travel the busy main lines operated by other carriers, the Rock Island Line lives on in the hearts of those whom it employed and served.
Download or read book Boomer written by Linda Grant Niemann and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating mix of fact, history, self-confession, self-accusation, and self-forgiveness—a diary of both emotional relationships and travel.” —Pasatiempo This classic account of self-discovery and railroad life describes Linda Grant Niemann’s travels as an itinerant brakeman on the Southern Pacific. Boomer combines travelogue, Wild West adventure, sexual memoir, and closely observed ethnography. A Berkeley Ph.D., Niemann turned her back on academia and set out to master the craft of railroad brakeman, beginning a journey of sexual and subcultural exploration and traveling down a path toward recovery from alcoholism. In honest, clean prose, Niemann treks off the beaten path and into the forgotten places along the rail lines, finding true American characters with colorful pasts—and her true self as well. “Ma[kes] the railroad experience come alive with all its grit, danger, romance, and general outrageousness . . . Possibly the finest book I’ve ever read about the actual experience of working on the railroad.” —Trains Magazine “Niemann has a taut, lyrically restrained but vividly descriptive style, with an observational vigilance befitting a brakeman’s mindset, and her narrative clips along like a boxcar rolling through the yard.” —Bloom Magazine “A remarkable adventure tale, the occupational odyssey of the Ph.D. in literature who immerses herself in blue-collar America.” —Library Journal
Download or read book John Frank Stevens written by Clifford Foust and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America's foremost civil engineers of the past 150 years, John Frank Stevens was a railway reconnaissance and location engineer whose reputation was made on the Canadian Pacific and Great Northern lines. Self-taught and driven by a bulldog tenacity of purpose, he was hired by Theodore Roosevelt as chief engineer of the Panama Canal, creating a technical achievement far ahead of its time. Stevens also served for more than five years as the head of the US Advisory Commission of Railway Experts to Russia and as a consultant who contributed to many engineering feats, including the control of the Mississippi River after the disastrous floods of 1927 and construction of the Boulder (Hoover) Dam. Drawing on Stevens's surviving personal papers and materials from projects with which he was associated, Clifford Foust offers an illuminating look into the life of an accomplished civil engineer.
Download or read book Off the Main Lines written by Don L. Hofsommer and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A railway history expert “vividly portrays a way of life no longer seen. A fascinating insight into historical American railroading” (Railways Illustrated). In this visually stunning and comprehensive photographic essay, railroad historian and photographer Donovan L. Hofsommer records the end of branchline passenger service, the demise of electric railroads, the transition from steam to diesel power, as well as the end of common carrier freight service on the Colorado narrow gauge. Off the MainLines carries readers along out-of-the-way railways in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, and South Dakota to see the changes that occurred on these lines from the 1940s to the 1990s. “If you miss the Milwaukee, recall the Rock Island, suffer from the loss of the Soo Line, maintain sadness for the Santa Fe, can’t forget the Frisco, absent-mindedly buried the Burlington Route in oblivion or still maintain romantic recollections of the Katy, you’ll find Dr. Hofsommer’s Off the Main Lines exactly where you need to be!”—Lexington Quarterly “A fitting tribute to its subject; railroad enthusiasts across the upper Midwest and beyond will find Hofsommer’s personalized history to be both edifying and immensely rewarding.”—The Annals of Iowa “An interesting blend of historical fact and personal reminiscence, and traces the author’s own personal 60-year rail odyssey to a variety of ‘off the beaten path’ locations.”—Michigan Railfan “All in all this is a good photographic essay of some lesser known routes and, as usual, I picked up a few more pieces of information to use at a railroad trivia night.”—The Villager
Download or read book A Mighty Fine Road written by H. Roger Grant and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Grant has once again hit a home run . . . a detailed but readable history of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, a major Midwestern railroad.” —Carlos A. Schwantes, St. Louis Mercantile Library Professor Emeritus The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad’s history is one of big booms and bigger busts. When it became the first railroad to reach and then cross the Mississippi River in 1856, it emerged as a leading American railroad company. But after aggressive expansion and a subsequent change in management, the company struggled and eventually declared bankruptcy in 1915. What followed was a cycle of resurrections and bankruptcies; a grueling, ten-year, ultimately unsuccessful battle to merge with the Union Pacific; and the Rock Island’s final liquidation in 1981. But today, long after its glory days and eventual demise, the “Mighty Fine Road” has left behind a living legacy of major and feeder lines throughout the country. In his latest work, railroad historian H. Roger Grant offers an accessible, gorgeously illustrated, and comprehensive history of this iconic American railroad. “This handsome, well-illustrated book merits the attention of any reader interested in the history of Iowa. And just as important, the book reminds us of the importance of railroads to the history and vitality of American society. All aboard!” —Iowa City Press-Citizen “A Mighty Fine Road lays out the amazing, yet heartbreaking history of the railroad I loved. The historical opportunities and disappointments of the Rock Island is clearly explained in Grant’s book, with visionaries keeping the dream moving forward, yet damaged and constrained by greed and lack of vision with the next management regime.” —Dan Sabin, President, Iowa Northern Railway Company
Download or read book A New History of Iowa written by Jeff Bremer and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-10-06 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The state of Iowa is largely unappreciated and often misunderstood. It has a small population and sits in the middle of a huge country. It’s thought of as an uninspiring place full of farms and fields of corn. But Iowa represents America as surely as New York and California, and Iowa’s history is more dynamic, complicated, and influential than commonly imagined. Jeff Bremer’s A New History of Iowa offers the most comprehensive history of the Hawkeye State ever written, surveying Iowa from the last ice age through the COVID-19 pandemic. It tells a new and vibrant story, examining the state’s small-town culture, politics, social and economic development, and its many diverse inhabitants. Bremer features well-known individuals, such as Sauk leader Black Hawk, artist Grant Wood, botanist George Washington Carver, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, and President Herbert Hoover. But Bremer broadens the state’s story by including new voices—among them, runaway enslaved men who joined Iowa’s 60th Colored Regiment in the Civil War, young female pearl button factory workers, Latino railroad workers who migrated to the state in the early twentieth century, and recent refugees from Southeast Asia and the Balkans. This new story of Iowa provides a brisk, readable narrative written for a broad audience, from high school and college students to teachers and scholars to general readers. It tells the story of ordinary and extraordinary people of all backgrounds and greatly improves our knowledge of a state whose history has been neglected. A New History of Iowa is for everyone who wants to learn about Iowa’s surprising, complex, and remarkable past.
Download or read book The Electric Pullman written by Lawrence A. Brough and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the Ohio railroad car and equipment company and its 16-year run. Entering an already crowded and established industry, the Niles Car & Manufacturing Company in Ohio began business with surprising success, producing well over 1,000 electric and steam railway cars—cars so durable they rarely needed to be replaced. That durability essentially put the company out of business, and it vanished from the scene as quickly as it had appeared, leaving little behind except its sturdy railway cars. The story of this highly regarded company spans just 16 years, from Niles’s incorporation in 1901 to the abandonment of railway car production and sale of the property to a firm that would briefly build engine parts during World War I. Including unpublished photographs and rosters of railway cars produced by the company and still in existence in railroad museums, The Electric Pullman will appeal to railroad enthusiasts everywhere. Praise for The Electric Pullman “Required reading for anyone interested in interurban history. It holds additional appeal for those interested in Ohio history or the junction point between business, society, and technology.” —Lexington Quarterly “Although not one of the major manufacturers in its field, the Niles company produced some notable and well-remembered equipment during the height of the electric interurban railway era. Indeed, among some interurban railway historians, Niles cars are sacred objects. As such, its story deserves to be told and theoretically would be a logical complement to IUP’s books on the Brill and Jewett companies. Brough himself is a serious historian who knows his subject and has clearly mined all the sources that seem to exist.” —Herbert H. Harwood, Jr., author of The Railroad that Never Was and The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway
Download or read book Visionary Railroader written by H. Roger Grant and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-17 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visionary Railroader chronicles the life of a key figure in the history of rail travel in the United States. As president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Jervis Langdon Jr. had the opportunity to put progressive concepts into practice. In 1964, Langdon took charge of the Rock Island, and by the time he left in 1970, he had spearheaded major improvements for this struggling carrier. The same year, he became lead trustee for the bankrupt Penn Central and three years later assumed the presidency. From his role in passing the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 to his work on creating the quasi-public Conrail, Visionary Railroader examines the impact of Langdon's active life with clear text, unique representations of media of the day, and select family photos.
Download or read book Sunset Cluster written by H. Roger Grant and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-20 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the Sunset Cluster—railroads that were doomed to fail? The first two decades of the 20th century were the twilight of the Railroad Age. Major routes had long been established, and local service became the focus of new construction. Beginning in 1907, a cluster of five shortline railroads were established in otherwise unconnected parts of Iowa. They, however, would short lived. The five Iowa 'sunset cluster' railroads might appear to deserve eternal obscurity, being at best minor footnotes to American railroad history. After all, their total mileage barely exceeded 100 miles. Their average life span, moreover, covered about five years, and the Des Moines & Red Oak Railway (DM&RO) never turned a wheel. Yet, these Iowa shortlines had an immediate positive impact to their service area, but disappointingly they became victims of modal competition and the Good Roads Movement. Using contemporary newspapers, government reports, and other little-known sources, renowned railway historian H. Roger Grant offers a fascinating look at these shortline railroads. Sunset Cluster explores the almost desperate desire by communities to benefit from steel rails before the regional railroad map finally imploded and the challenges faced by latter-day shortline builders.
Download or read book Crossroads of a Continent written by Peter A. Hansen and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossroads of a Continent: Missouri Railroads, 1851-1921 tells the story of the state's railroads and their vital role in American history. Missouri and St. Louis, its largest city, are strategically located within the American Heartland. On July 4, 1851, when the Pacific Railroad of Missouri began construction in St. Louis, the city took its first step to becoming a major hub for railroads. By the 1920s, the state was crisscrossed with railways reaching toward all points of the compass. Authors Peter A. Hansen, Don L. Hofsommer, and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes explore the history of Missouri railroads through personal, absorbing tales of the cutthroat competition between cities and between railroads that meant the difference between prosperity and obscurity, the ambitions and dreams of visionaries Fred Harvey and Arthur Stilwell, and the country's excitement over the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 color images of historical railway ephemera, Crossroads of a Continent is an engaging history of key American railroads and of Missouri's critical contribution to the American story.
Download or read book On Railways Far Away written by William D. Middleton and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The photographer shares over 200 images from his sixty-year career covering railroad tourism across the world, plus the stories behind them. In this lavishly illustrated memoir, William D. Middleton invites readers to climb aboard and share with him sixty years of railroad tourism around the globe. Middleton’s award-winning photography has recorded events such as the final days of American Civil War locomotives in Morocco and the start up of the world’s first high-speed railway in Japan. He has photographed such great civil works as Scotland’s Firth of Forth Bridge and the splendid railway station at Haydarpasa on the Asian side of the Bosporus, while closer to home he has been recognized for his significant contribution to the photographic interpretation of North America’s railroading history. On Railways Far Away presents over 200 of Middleton’s favorite photographs and the personal stories behind the images. It is a book that will delight both armchair travelers and those for whom the railroads still hold romance. Praise for On Railroads Far Away “Few American chroniclers of the international railroad scene have shown the versatility and insight of William D. Middleton. As an author and a photographer (not to mention a professional engineer), he demonstrated an uncanny ability to connect all the dots in railroading, from all corners of the world. In this book he does it with an inimitable personal touch.” —Kevin P. Keefe, publisher, Classic Trains magazine “Middleton will go down as the only producer of popular railroad history . . . who was able to present such a broad coverage of railways during his lifetime. . . . There has never been a person with his wide range of talents (as a researcher, writer, and photographer), his personal discipline to be a steady producer of historical publications, and his unrivaled zeal to record railroad activity in interesting spots around the globe. Many have excelled in one or even two of these categories, but no one has ever come close to his overall record. It will take a generation for the breadth, depth, and significance of his total contribution to be appreciated.” —J. Parker Lamb, author of Railroads of Meridian
