How New York City subways signage evolved from a "visual mess" to a uniform system with Helvetica triumphant. For years, the signs in the New York City subway system were a bewildering hodge-podge of lettering styles, sizes, shapes, materials, colors, and messages. The original mosaics (dating from as early as 1904), displaying a variety of serif and sans serif letters and decorative elements, were supplemented by signs in terracotta and cut stone. Over the years, enamel signs identifying stations and warning riders not to spit, smoke, or cross the tracks were added to the mix. Efforts to untangle this visual mess began in the mid-1960s, when the city transit authority hired the design firm Unimark International to create a clear and consistent sign system. We can see the results today in the white-on-black signs throughout the subway system, displaying station names, directions, and instructions in crisp Helvetica. This book tells the story of how typographic order triumphed over chaos. The process didn't go smoothly or quickly. At one point New York Times architecture writer Paul Goldberger declared that the signs were so confusing one almost wished that they weren't there at all. Legend has it that Helvetica came in and vanquished the competition. Paul Shaw shows that it didn't happen that way-that, in fact, for various reasons (expense, the limitations of the transit authority sign shop), the typeface overhaul of the 1960s began not with Helvetica but with its forebear, Standard (AKA Akzidenz Grotesk). It wasn't until the 1980s and 1990s that Helvetica became ubiquitous. Shaw describes the slow typographic changeover (supplementing his text with more than 250 images-photographs, sketches, type samples, and documents). He places this signage evolution in the context of the history of the New York City subway system, of 1960s transportation signage, of Unimark International, and of Helvetica itself.

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."

The Georgia & Florida Railroad began with bright promise, but like many other enterprises in the early twentieth-century South, it experienced hard times. The story begins in 1906, when-responding to a perceived need for better connections to northern markets-a group of entrepreneurs led by prominent Virginia banker John Skelton Williams began to cobble together logging short lines to create more than 350 miles of railroad connecting Augusta, Georgia, with Madison, Florida. At first the G&F triggered growth in its region as several new towns sprang up or expanded along its lines. By 1915, however, the economic dislocations caused by World War I threw the G&F into receivership, and a few years later the G&F came close to dismemberment. Fortunately, shippers and investors rallied to the railroad's cause, and business conditions improved. In 1926 the road was reorganized and, under pressure to "expand or die," built to Greenwood, South Carolina. The Great Depression forced the G&F into bankruptcy, and after its record-length receivership, it was acquired by the Southern Railway in 1963. When the Southern Railway dissolved the corporation and abandoned much of the former trackage, the G&F became the "Gone & Forgotten." Yet in its 57-year lifespan the G&F did much to bring about agricultural diversification and relative prosperity in the wiregrass region of southern Georgia and northern Florida. Offering insights on social and economic conditions in the South from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, Grant's study of this obscure yet noteworthy railroad will appeal to those interested in transportation, business, railroad, and Southern regional history.

"Craig Sanders has done an excellent job of research... his treatment is as comprehensive as anyone could reasonably wish for, and solidly based. In addition, he succeeds in making it all clear as well as any human can. He also manages to inject enough humor and human interest to keep the reader moving." Herbert H. Harwood, author of The Lake Shore Electric Railway Story and Invisible Giants: The Empires of Cleveland s Van Sweringen Brothers

A complete history of Amtrak operations in the heartland, this volume describes conditions that led to the passage of the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970, the formation and implementation of Amtrak in 1970 71, and the major factors that have influenced Amtrak operations since its inception. More than 140 photographs and 3 maps bring to life the story as told by Sanders. This book will become indispensable to train enthusiasts through its examination of Americans long-standing fascination with passenger trains. When it began in 1971, many expected Amtrak to last about three years before going out of existence for lack of business, but the public s continuing support of funding for Amtrak has enabled it and the passenger train to survive despite seemingly insurmountable odds."

This further volume in this series, looking at the changing patterns of rail freight from 1968 to the present day, examines the gradual shift from wagonload to trainload operation, the cull of public goods depots and small private sidings and the Speedlink years, together with details of wagon types and terminal facilities, and many charts, diagrams and plans.

With the coming of railroads, upstart Chicago quickly became the Midwest's center for commerce and trade, overtaking its older rival, St. Louis. The first tracks to link the East coast with the West ran through Chicago, and within a few decades the city grew to be the hub of an immense transportation network that stretched across the nation. Noted transportation writer David M. Young vividly tells how railroads created and shaped Chicago, from the earliest times to the present. He shows how the expansion of rail lines promoted the growth of the suburbs, and how Chicago's burgeoning manufacturing hub became home to such corporate giants as Cyrus McCormick's harvester operation and catalogue houses Montgomery Ward; Spiegel; and Sears, Roebuck and Company. For the most part, the railroad companies that schemed to bypass Chicago failed. As the hub of a vast transportation network, Chicago experienced many tragic accidents at rail crossings. One of the first books to deal with the history of accidents and issues of safety, The Iron Horse and the Windy City reveals how Chicago eventually forced railroad companies to eliminate dangerous crossings by installing barriers or by raising tracks above street level. Railroad magnates, entrepreneurs, and ordinary people come to life in this first comprehensive account of the impact of railroads on Chicago. Transportation historians and general readers interested in Chicago will find it both essential and engaging.

"Steel Trails of Hawkeyeland offers a comprehensive examination of railroads in Iowa from the introduction of the iron horse to the present. It is more than a study of a single, albeit significant American state. Hofsommer superbly relates local events to the national picture. His is a one-of-a-kind volume." H. Roger Grant, author of Follow the Flag: A History of the Wabash Railroad Company

In the time of jet airplanes and interstate highways, the Internet and e-commerce, it is difficult to comprehend and appreciate the impact that railroads had on Iowa s landscape in terms not just of transportation service and economic development, but of political, social, and cultural linkage as well. Railroads helped to define the character of America, and that certainly was the case in Iowa. Pioneer lines penetrated the interior from established Mississippi River communities during the state s early railroad era, and later opened up huge tracts for agricultural opportunity as well as urban development.

A wide-ranging survey of Iowa s railroad experience, Steel Trails of Hawkeyeland offers a snapshot of a fascinating and critically important element in the state s history, and emphasizes the tight symbiotic relationship between Iowa and its railways. Packed with more than 250 photographs, this is a thorough and engaging book."

Mercer (economics, U. of California at Santa Barbara) assesses the economic efficiency of the land grant subsidies to the large U.S. railroad systems in the 19th century. He limits his analysis to the relationship of the social and private rates of return on investment in the land grant railroads to

The Jewett Car Company was born in Akron, Ohio, in the heyday of the electric railway boom in the 1890s. The company gained an excellent reputation for its elegant, well-built wooden cars for street railway companies, interurban lines, and rapid transit service. Cities large and small used Jewett cars. Many interurban lines employed the graceful, arch-windowed, wood interurban that Jewett was famous for. Competition from automobiles and from larger car builders such as J. G. Brill and the St. Louis Car Company signaled the beginning of the end for Jewett. The company was offered the opportunity to produce munitions for World War I, but refused when a German nationalist banker who was a major source of financing for Jewett refused to allow the company to do anything that would harm Germany. As a result, the Jewett Car Company died, but the reputation of their product survives to this day.

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 Koell'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, Koell 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 Koell 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.

This long-awaited study, the magnum opus of a leading railroad historian, describes the conception, construction, and early operation of the first narrow gauge railroads in northern California. It is lavishly illustrated by some 600 photographs and drawings, almost three-quarters of which have never before been published. The topic is approached through an unusual lens: the history of the relatively small but extraordinarily inventive contracting and engineering firm of the brothers Thomas and Martin Carter. The Carters were able to reduce the cost and complexity of light railroad construction to the point where local narrow gauge lines could initially compete with the state's notorious railroad monopolies. Pioneering a mobile manufacturing operation that could supply locally funded short lines with rolling stock (which traditionally came from East Coast manufacturers), the Carter Brothers began with a line to serve Salinas Valley wheat farmers, desperate to achieve an independent means for conveying their crops to the wharf in Monterey. The narrow gauge railroad that resulted was an act of political and economic defiance, but ultimately a hopeless assault on the "Octopus"-the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads. Rallying around the example set in Monterey, a narrow gauge movement in California flourished in the mid-1870s, with the rapid launching of five more companies-the North Pacific Coast, the Santa Cruz Railroad, the Santa Cruz & Felton, the Nevada County Narrow Gauge, and the South Pacific Coast-all of which drew on the Carter Brothers for manufacturing and engineering. Soon, Thomas and Martin Carter were not only selling railroad supplies and engineering to all six short lines, but had won management positions with the strongest, the South Pacific Coast. Until personal and financial disaster overtook them in 1880, the Carters were at the forefront of not just a new business, but a new technology.

Invisible Giants is the Horatio Alger-esque tale of a pair of reclusive Cleveland brothers, Oris Paxton and Mantis James Van Sweringen, who rose from poverty to become two of the most powerful men in America. They controlled the country's largest railroad system -- a network of track reaching from the Atlantic to Salt Lake City and from Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico. On the eve of the Great Depression they were close to controlling the country's first coast-to-coast rail system -- a goal that still eludes us. They created the model upper-class suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio, with its unique rapid transit access. They built Cleveland's landmark Terminal Tower and its innovative "city within a city" complex. Indisputably, they created modern Cleveland.

Yet beyond a small, closely knit circle, the bachelor Van Sweringen brothers were enigmas. Their actions were aggressive, creative, and bold, but their manner was modest, mild, and retiring. Dismissed by many as mere shoe-string financial manipulators, they created enduring works, which remain strong today. The Van Sweringen story begins in early-20th-century Cleveland suburban real estate and reaches its zenith in the heady late 1920s, amid the turmoil of national transportation power politics and unprecedented empire-building. As the Great Depression destroyed many of their fellow financiers, the "Vans" survived through imaginative stubbornness -- until tragedy ended their careers almost simultaneously. Invisible Giants is the first comprehensive biography of these two remarkable if mysterious men.

Early in the 19th century, growing American cities began to experience transportation problems. One solution was the horse-drawn streetcar, developed in 1832, but it soon proved inadequate. The first elevated train was transporting passengers above the streets of Manhattan by 1871; the first subway opened 25 years later in Boston; and similar systems soon followed in Philadelphia and Chicago. Rapid transit was confined to these few cities until after World War II, when a new generation of systems began to appear. In the 1970s, light rail became an economical alternative to conventional rapid transit. By century s end, some three dozen cities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico operated metropolitan rapid transit or light rail systems that transported five billion urban passengers annually, and still more were under construction or planned.
These diverse systems include elevated lines ranging from Chicago s "L" to the fully automatic Skytrain metro of Vancouver, B.C.; subways from New York City s thundering tunnels the world s largest underground system to the thoroughly modern metro of Guadalajara; and light rail from lovingly restored New Orleans streetcars to the sleek, articulated vehicles of Silicon Valley.

Metropolitan Railways is a large-scale, extensively illustrated volume that deals with the growth and development of urban rail transit systems in North America. It traces the history of rail transit technology from such impractical early schemes as a proposed steam-powered "arcade railway" under New York s Broadway through today s sophisticated systems. Rapid transit enthusiasts as well as residents of cities that are potential candidates for rapid transit or light rail systems will find this book indispensable."

The Turkestano-Siberian Railroad, or Turksib, was one of the great construction projects of the Soviet Union\u2019s First Five-Year Plan. As the major icon to ending the economic \u0022backwardness\u0022 of the USSR\u2019s minority republics, it stood apart from similar efforts as one of the most potent metaphors for the creation of a unified socialist nation. Built between December 1926 and January 1931 by nearly 50,000 workers and at a cost of more 161 million rubles, Turksib embodied the Bolsheviks\u2019 commitment to end ethnic inequality and promote cultural revolution in one the far-flung corners of the old Tsarist Empire, Kazakhstan. Trumpeted as the \u0022forge of the Kazakh proletariat,\u0022 the railroad was to create a native working class, bringing not only trains to the steppes, but also the Revolution. In the first in-depth study of this grand project, Matthew Payne explores the transformation of its builders in Turksib\u2019s crucible of class war, race riots, state purges, and the brutal struggle of everyday life. In the battle for the souls of the nation\u2019s engineers, as well as the racial and ethnic conflicts that swirled, far from Moscow, around Stalin\u2019s vast campaign of industrialization, he finds a microcosm of the early Soviet Union.

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. Running times were reduced. Tonnage capacities were increased. Fuel and maintenance costs were lowered, and the service lives of electric locomotives promised to be twice as long as those of steam locomotives. Yet despite its many triumphs, electrification of U.S. railroads failed to achieve the wide application that once was so confidently predicted. By the 1970s, it was the Soviet Union, with almost 22,000 electrified route-miles, that led the way, and the U.S. had declined to 17th place.

Today, electric operation of U.S. railroads is back in the limelight. The federally funded Northeast Corridor Improvement Program has provided an expanded Northeast Corridor electrification, with high-speed trains that are giving the fastest rail passenger service ever seen in North America, while still other high-speed corridors are planned for other parts of the country. And with U.S. rail freight tonnage at its highest levels in history, the ability of electric locomotives to expand capacity promises to bring renewed consideration of freight railroad electrification.

Middleton begins his ambitious chronicle of the ups and downs of railway electrification with the history of its early days, and brings it right up to the present which is surely not the end of this complex and mercurial story."

Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway
History and Steam Locomotives

Richard E. Prince

Richard E. Prince s long out-of-print encyclopedic study of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway, "The Dixie Line," with hundreds of vintage photographs, schematics, maps, and rosters.

Railroad buffs, historians, and casual readers alike will be delighted by the reappearance of Richard E. Prince s Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway. It was originally published in 1967, and its reputation as the foremost work on this railroad is still unchallenged.
The NC&StL Railway originated in 1845 as the Nashville and Chattanooga RR. Taken over by the Union Army during the Civil War, it suffered extensive damage from Confederate attack but was rebuilt and operated by the U.S. Military Railroad for over two years. Returned to its owners in September 1865, it became the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. in 1873, after absorbing the Nashville & Northwestern RR.
During the next 25 years, it became known to the public first as the Tennessee Line, then as the Lookout Mountain Route. In 1890 it gained entrance into Atlanta as lessee of the state-owned Western & Atlantic RR. Paducah and Memphis were reached in 1896, when lines of the former Paducah, Tennessee & Alabama RR were leased from L&N. At its zenith in the 1920s, it operated approximately 1,259 miles of track, from the Mississippi and Ohio rivers through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama, to Atlanta, Georgia.
In 1880, to eliminate the threat of competition that was developing between the two companies, the Louisville & Nashville RR acquired control of the NC&StL Ry., much to the dismay of the citizens of Nashville, and for the next 77 years it operated as a prosperous subsidiary of the Old Reliable. It was actually absorbed by the L&N organization in 1957 to become part of the Nashville and W&A divisions. But it will always be remembered by the people of Tennessee and Georgia as the original Dixie Line the route of such Chicago-Florida passenger trains as the Dixie Flyer, Dixie Limited, Dixie Express, Dixie Mail, Dixieland, Dixie Flagler, and Dixiana.
Maps, schedules, rosters, diagrams, and hundreds of photographs supplement historical information on the company and technical information on the trains.

Richard E. Prince attended Georgia School of Technology in Atlanta. During World War II, he joined the Merchant Marine and sailed on steam Liberty ships. He worked in several capacities for the L&N Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad. Prince retired in 1983 and lives in Omaha, Nebraska. He has written ten books on railroads.

May 2001
196 pages, 348 b&w photos, 8 1/4 x 10 3/4, index
cloth 0-253-33927-8 $59.95 t / 45.00

Contents
Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. Historical Sketch
Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. The Tennessee Line
Western & Atlantic Railroad
Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. -Lookout Mountain Route
Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. The Dixie Line
Steam Locomotives Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry.
Steam Freight and Passenger Trains NC&StL Ry.
Steam Locomotive Diagrams"

Louisville & Nashville Steam Locomotives
Revised 1968 Edition
Richard E. Prince

A revised new edition of an encyclopedic study.

"For over one hundred years the steam locomotives provided the principal motive power on the Louisville & Nashville RR. During this period over 2000 different steam engines were owned by the Old Reliable." Thus begins Richard E. Princes encyclopedic study of the Louisville & Nashville s Steam Locomotives.

First published in 1959 and revised in 1968, this is the crucial book for the Louisville and Nashville Locomotive's many steam fans. With hundreds of vintage photographs, detailed rosters, and schematic drawings it is an invaluable resource for railroad buffs and historians. But even casual readers will be swept up in Prince s history of the growth and diversification of the L&N.

Richard E. Prince is author of nine railroad books. He attended Georgia School of Technology in Atlanta. During World War II, he joined the Merchant Marines and sailed on steam Liberty ships. He worked in several capacities for the L&N Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad. He is now retired and lives in Omaha, Nebraska. Among his many books are Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and Seaboard Air Line Railway (Indiana University Press)."

A history of the Pennsylvania Railroad and its predecessor companies in Indiana. Few corporate institutions had such widespread impact upon Indiana's people or their way of life the "Pennsy" once operated one-fourth of the state's rail mileage. Highlights of its story include coverage of its famous passenger trains, its impact upon the state's economy, the railroad's contributions to Allied victory in World War II, and the post-war decline which led to its merger into Penn Central. Illustrations recreate images of its speedy passenger trains and heavy-tonnage freights, as well as advertising and other promotional materials dating back to the 1840s."