This book talks about: main line through Carmarthen; Whitland to Pembroke Dock; Clarbeston Road to Milford Haven and Fishguard; closed line to Cardigan; and closed line from Llandilo to Carmarthen.

Rail freight expert Paul Shannon takes a detailed look at rail freight developments since 1968. He examines the gradual decline of coal mining in the UK, the changing requirements of the power generators, and changes brought about by privatization. The text is supported by many photographs, diagrams and maps.

Nothing so changed nineteenth-century America as did the railroad. Growing up together, the iron horse and the young nation developed a fast friendship. "Railroad Crossing" is the story of what happened to that friendship, particularly in California, and it illuminates the chaos that was industrial America from the middle of the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twentieth.
Americans clamored for the progress and prosperity that railroads would surely bring, and no railroad was more crucial for California than the transcontinental line linking East to West. With Gold Rush prosperity fading, Californians looked to the railroad as the state's new savior. But social upheaval and economic disruption came down the tracks along with growth and opportunity.
Analyzing the changes wrought by the railroad, William Deverell reveals the contradictory roles that technology and industrial capitalism played in the lives of Americans. That contrast was especially apparent in California, where the gigantic corporate "Octopus"--the Southern Pacific Railroad--held near-monopoly status. The state's largest employer and biggest corporation, the S.P. was a key provider of jobs and transportation--and wielder of tremendous political and financial clout.
Deverell's lively study is peopled by a rich and disparate cast: railroad barons, newspaper editors, novelists, union activists, feminists, farmers, and the railroad workers themselves. Together, their lives reflect the many tensions--political, social, and economic--that accompanied the industrial transition of turn-of-the-century America.

To Follow

This title talks about: Barnt Green and Bromsgrove to Ashchurch; The Langley, Stourbridge and Worcester line; Worcester to Evesham and Honeybourne; Redditch to Evesham; Worcester to the Malverns and the Bromyard branch; Old Hill to Rubery; and Stourbridge to Dudley.

Covering almost every line in the country, this acclaimed series of books juxtaposes photographs of the same railway location separated in time by just a few years, or maybe a century or more. Sometimes the result is dereliction or disappearance, in others a transformation into a modern high-speed railway. In both cases, the contrasts are intriguing and informative. This volume includes: Deeside and Chester; Gwynedd coast and branches; Anglesey, Menai Bridge to Bangor; the Flintshire coast; the Wrexham area and around Mold; Ruabon to Dolgellau, Blaenau and Welshpool; and, Cambrian border branches.

From the early 1900s to the present day we can witness the unfolding story of this popular holiday line, from Newton Abbot through Paignton, the start of the preserved section, beside the sea at Goodrington, to Churston and the Brixham branch, through Greenway Tunnel, and down to the terminus beside the yacht-filled estuary.

Empire's Tracks boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants who toiled on its path. In this meticulously researched book, Manu Karuka situates the railroad within the violent global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Through an examination of legislative, military, and business records, Karuka deftly explains the imperial foundations of U.S. political economy. Tracing the shared paths of Indigenous and Asian American histories, this multisited interdisciplinary study connects military occupation to exclusionary border policies, a linked chain spanning the heart of U.S. imperialism. This highly original and beautifully wrought book unveils how the transcontinental railroad laid the tracks of the U.S. Empire.

A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism.
Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington's presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation's largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. Lincoln consulted him on steamship strategy during the Civil War; Jay Gould was first his uneasy ally and then sworn enemy; and Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States, was his spiritual counselor. We see Vanderbilt help to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation--in fact, as T. J. Stiles elegantly argues, Vanderbilt did more than perhaps any other individual to create the economic world we live in today.
In "The First Tycoon," Stiles offers the first complete, authoritative biography of this titan, and the first comprehensive account of the Commodore's personal life. It is a sweeping, fast-moving epic, and a complex portrait of the great man. Vanderbilt, Stiles shows, embraced the philosophy of the Jacksonian Democrats and withstood attacks by his conservative enemies for being too competitive. He was a visionary who pioneered business models. He was an unschooled fistfighter who came to command the respect of New York's social elite. And he was a father who struggled with a gambling-addicted son, a husband who was loving yet abusive, and, finally, an old man who was obsessed with contacting the dead.
"The First Tycoon" is the exhilarating story of a man and a nation maturing together: the powerful account of a man whose life was as epic and complex as American history itself.

"From the Hardcover edition."

This work provides coverage of: Oxford GW and Rewley Road stations; The Great Western main line through Didcot to Shrivenham; Branch lines to Faringdon, Henley-on-Thames, Wallingford, Abingdon, Fairford, Woodstock and Watlington; The 'Cotswold Line' through Kingham; The railway centres of Banbury, Bicester and Princes Risborough.

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.

With its lake and coastal steamer fleet and its branches forming the ideal 'Gateway to Lakeland', the Furness Railway is remembered with affection by both local people and holidaymakers. Happily most of the routes still exist; the main route still serves the scenic coastal area, and the Lakeside branch is now one of Britain's thriving preserved lines.