During Reconstruction, an alliance of southern planters and northern capitalists rebuilt the southern railway system using remnants of the Confederate railroads that had been built and destroyed during the Civil War. In the process of linking Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia by rail, this alliance created one of the largest corporations in the world, engendered bitter political struggles, and transformed the South in lasting ways, says Scott Nelson. Iron Confederacies uses the history of southern railways to explore linkages among the themes of states' rights, racial violence, labor strife, and big business in the nineteenth-century South. By 1868, Ku Klux Klan leaders had begun mobilizing white resentment against rapid economic change by asserting that railroad consolidation led to political corruption and black economic success. As Nelson notes, some of the Klan's most violent activity was concentrated along the Richmond-Atlanta rail corridor. But conflicts over railroads were eventually resolved, he argues, in agreements between northern railroad barons and Klan leaders that allowed white terrorism against black voters while surrendering states' control over the southern economy. |Focusing on the Reconstruction era, this book links the expansion of Southern railways by Southern planters and northern capitalists to issues of State's rights, racial violence, and big business.

When the American Railway Union went on strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1894, it set into motion a chain of events whose repercussions are still felt today. The strike pitted America's largest industrial union against twenty-four railroads, paralyzed rail traffic in half the country, and in the end was broken up by federal troops and suppressed by the courts, with union leader Eugene Debs incarcerated. But behind the Pullman case lay a conflict of ideologies at a watershed time in our nation's history.

David Ray Papke reexamines the events and personalities surrounding the 1894 strike, related proceedings in the Chicago trial courts, and the 1895 Supreme Court decision, In re Debs, which set important standards for labor injunctions. He shows how the Court, by upholding Debs's contempt citation, dealt fatal blows to broad-based unionism in the nation's most important industry and to any hope for a more evenhanded form of judicial involvement in labor disputes-thus setting the stage for labor law in decades to come.

The Pullman case was a defining moment in the often violent confrontation between capital and labor. It matched wealthy industrialist George Pullman against Debs and gave a stage to Debs's fledgling attorney Clarence Darrow. Throughout the trial, capital and labor tried to convince the public of the justice of their cause: Debs decrying the company's treatment of workers and Pullman raising fears of radical unionists. Papke provides an analytically concise and highly readable account of these proceedings, offering insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the law at the peak of industrial capitalism, showcasing Debs's passionate commitment to workers' rights, and providing a window on America during a period of rapid industrialization and social transformation.

Papke shows that the law was far from neutral in defending corporate interests and suggests what the Pullman case, by raising questions about both the legitimacy of giant corporations and the revolutionary style of industrial unions, can teach us about law and legal institutions in our own time. His book captures the passions of industrial America and tells an important story at the intersection of legal and cultural history.

Beginning in 1862 as a small carrier connecting St. Paul and Minneapolis with outlying towns, the Saint Paul & Pacific Railroad became the foundation of the vast rail system that would open the entire Northwest. As a pioneering line in virgin territory, it played a vital role in the early development of Minnesota's economy. When railroad tycoon James J. Hill took over the troubled company in 1879, its tracks were extended into westward lines that eventually, as the Great Northern Railway, reached the Pacific Ocean. Written by leading railroad historian Augustus J. Veenendaal Jr. this finely researched book examines the growth of the fledgling Saint Paul & Pacific as it struggled to lay track, meet the schedule, and make the payroll. The railway's leaders and workers took risks of injury and ruin during these years on the frontier, when everything except hardship was in short supply. Veenendaal devotes an entire chapter to the accidents and disasters that befell the new enterprise, including deadly collisions and derailments. He also chronicles triumphs, such as the use of the Miller coupler and the refurbishment of the famed Wm. Crooks, a 4-4-0 woodburning engine that was the first locomotive in Minnesota. Veenendaal reveals the strategic importance of foreign investment in American railroads-in particular, Dutch investment. The Saint Paul & Pacific was one of the first railroads to attract the attention of Dutch bankers, who would eventually become the second largest group of foreign investors in American railroads. After James J. Hill bought out the Dutch interest in the railroad, he reorganized it as the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railroad. Today, after the megamergers of recent years, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe system owns the ghost of the old Saint Paul & Pacific Railroad Company.

It took ten years of laborious planning and exhaustive negotiations to create the mammoth Penn Central Railroad, the largest railroad in United States history. When the leviathan was finally born of a merger between the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads on February 1, 1968, the event was hailed as a great day for railroading. But the baby giant survived only 367 days. The crash of the Penn Central set a new record, this time for the largest bankruptcy the United States had ever seen.

"The Wreck of the Penn Central" provides a close-up view of the events that brought the Big Train to bankruptcy court--over-regulation, subsidized competition, big labor featherbedding, greed, corporate back-stabbing, stunning incompetence, and, yes, even a little sex.

Though Cuba was among the first countries in the world to utilize rail transport, the history of its railroads has been little studied. This English translation of the prize-winning Caminos para el azucar traces the story of railroads in Cuba from their introduction in the nineteenth century through the 1959 Revolution. More broadly, the book uses the development of the Cuban rail transport system to provide a fascinating perspective on Cuban history, particularly the story of its predominant agro-industry, sugar. While railroads facilitated the sugar industry's rapid growth after 1837, the authors argue, sugar interests determined where railroads would be built and who would benefit from them. Zanetti and Garcia explore the implications of this symbiotic relationship for the technological development of the railroads, the economic evolution of Cuba, and the lives of the railroad workers. As this work shows, the economic benefits that accompanied the rise of railroads in Europe and the United States were not repeated in Cuba. Sugar and Railroads provides a poignant demonstration of the fact that technological progress alone is far from sufficient for development. |Traces the history of railroads in Cuba through the 1959 revolution, showing how the sugar industry controlled the location of railroads and determined who would benefit from them.

Here, in a pictorial history, Jim Shaughnessy turns an eloquent photographer's eye to the Delaware & Hudson, the line that began in 1823 as a canal system to transport Pennsylvania coal to New York State. The D&H extended from Montreal to the coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania. It was active for 170 years, when the route was sold in 1993 to the Canadian Pacific Railway Corporation. The line made early railroad fame by importing from England the famous Stourbridge Lion, the first steam locomotive in America. This occurred during a great expansion into gravity, an interesting phase which took advantage of the mountainous terrain. The nineteenth century saw a period of economic growth and amalgamation, which was shaped by extremely able and ambitiou company presidents. Eventually the D&H advertised itself as "the Bridge Line to New England and Canada." Mountainous terrain around the coal mines challenged the line with heavy grades, so it was natural for one of its presidents, L. F. Loree, to be fascinated with experimental traction power. The many Loree locomotives, leaders in progressive design, are pictured and described herein. Because a good railroad history is always an economic history of a region, this book will surely please historian, too. Delaware & Hudson is a definitive work, encompassing the mining of the region and detailing the steamboat operations on Lakes George and Champlain. Syracuse University Press is pleased to reissue this exemplary study of a railroad. Delaware & Hudson has-and will-continue to raise the standards for all future railroad books.

The Louisiana & Arkansas Railway, known as "The Better Way," ran its first trains at the turn of the century and expanded over the years to connect New Orleans to Dallas. Well-maintained and enduringly profitable, this regional railroad succeeded because of the tenacity of three men who consecutively oversaw all aspects of operations. The story of the L&A is largely a collective biography of William Edenborn, William Buchanan, and Harvey Couch—the men who built and extended the line by shrewd acquisitions. These successful businessmen combined wisdom, foresight, and propensity for hard word—traits they had first demonstrated in other careers—with their longtime love for trains. Each applied remarkable talents for industry and commerce toward the development of the L&A to mold it into a model regional railroad. In this first history of the L&A, Fair traces the line's development from the early boom days of railroading to its dissolution in the modern era of takeovers. Although for much of its existence the L&A operated under the control of a parent company, the KCS, it long maintained independence. The eventual takeover by the superline in 1992 finally dissolved the L&A entirely.

The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads were officially joined on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, with the driving of a golden spike. This historic ceremony marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Spanning the Sierras and the "Great American Desert," the tracks connected San Francisco to Council Bluffs, Iowa. "A Great and Shining Road" is the exciting story of a mammoth feat that called forth entrepreneurial daring, financial wizardry, technological innovation, political courage and chicanery, and the heroism of thousands of laborers.

Leading railroad historian H. Roger Grant tells the story of the Chicago & North Western Railway from 1848, when the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad ran the first train west from Chicago, to the Union Pacific takeover in 1995. With a lively narrative and 173 illustrations, including historical photographs and maps, he reveals the inner workings of a railroad that once spanned nine states and has long intrigued enthusiasts.

Nimrod J. Bell worked as a conductor for several southern railroads in their formative period, from 1857 to 1894. After his career was cut short by an accident, he wrote his memoirs detailing his first glimpses of some of the earliest trains in the South and his thirty-eight years as a conductor. Published in Atlanta in 1896, his book offers a firsthand account of working conditions on the railroads, operational procedures, wartime railroading, and passenger travel during Reconstruction.

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.

Kansas City was only one of several trading centers along the Missouri River in the mid-nineteenth century. And not the largest at that. But it expanded rapidly into the region's leading commercial city while nearby towns showed only moderate growth or were absorbed by their suddenly urban neighbor. Why did Kansas City take off while others stayed behind? Kansas City got the railroads, says Charles Glaab.

But major rail lines did not merge in Kansas City by happenstance. In this classic urban study, Glaab illustrates the crucial role entrepreneurship and boosterism played in determining rail locations and consequently urban-growth patterns. To persuade the railroad companies to connect through Kansas City rather than its rivals-Leavenworth, St. Joseph, Westport, Independence, Lawrence, and Athison--local boosters, chief among them journalist Robert T. Van Horn, developed better community policies, formed stronger coalitions, and implemented more effective economic development programs than their neighbors.

Political maneuvering, individual decision making, and local promotion of internal improvements, as well as greed and corruption, Glaab contends, played key roles in determining the location of this regional metropolis. Extending beyond the borders and idiosyncrasies of one urban area, Glaab also demonstrates how what happened in Kansas City is representative of what happened across the western half of the United States.

First published in 1962, "Kansas City and the Railroads" remains highly regarded as a landmark study of the forces that shaped the growth of urban America. In this edition, Glaab has included a new preface explaining the development of this study and its relation to the literature that has appeared over the last thirty years.

The Chicago Great Western Railroad was a spunky midwestern carrier that contributed mightily to the transportation industry. The 1,500-mile CGW, built by the iconoclastic and ambitious A. B. Stickney, proved to be exceptionally innovative as it developed new ways to compete with larger railroads. Pitted against tough, determined competitors, the CGW during its eighty-five years made innovations that changed the history of American transportation. Among the pioneering activities for which the Great Western is remembered are the early use of internal combustion equipment, the hauling of truck trailers atop flatcars ("piggy-backs"), and the use of extremely long freight trains. Indeed, much of the railroad's past supports the notion that smaller, less-established carriers like the CGW frequently stimulated changes in industry thinking and practices. In spite of its innovations, the path of the Great Western, sometimes called the "Great Weedy," did not always run smoothly. In the 1930s, John W. Barriger III quipped, "The Chicago Great Western is a mountain railroad in a prairie country serving a traffic vacuum." Such a negative assessment was not uncommon for this Granger pike, which in fact climbed some steep grades and owned a long tunnel. And while the road did not operate in a "traffic vacuum," its competitors were well entrenched and robust. By 1903, the CGW served the strategic gateways of Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Joseph, and Omaha. Between Chicago and the Twin Cities alone, the company competed with six other roads. When the Chicago & North Western acquired the Great Western in 1968, one of America's most imaginative railroads disappeared. The Corn Belt Route is the first scholarly treatment of the Chicago Great Western Railroad, a company that has long intrigued the railfan, whether collector, modeler, photographer, or historian. Richly illustrated, this book tells the lively story of one of the great small railroads that once served the Midwest.

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.

After tackling the GW pannier tanks in his Locomotive Portfolios' for Pen & Sword, author David Maidment seeks out descriptions and photographs of the GW 0-6-2 tank engines, the majority of which were built by the Rhymney, Taff Vale, Barry and other Welsh railways from the last decade or so of the nineteenth century onwards. The engines of eight different companies, absorbed by the GWR in 1922, are described and illustrated, and the way in which many were modernised and rebuilt at Swindon or Caerphilly Works in the 1920s. Charles Collett was, however, faced with a motive power crisis in the mining valleys at the Grouping, as many of the companies had economised on essential maintenance as the GW's take-over drew near, and he had to hurriedly design a standard 0-6-2T to complement and bolster their work as the powerful GW 2-8-0Ts were too heavy and wide for many of the Cardiff valleys. These engines, the 56XX & 66XX classes, became part of the South Wales scene between 1925 and 1964, mainly running the coal traffic between pits and docks, although they dominated Cardiff Valley passenger services until the influx of BR 3MT 2-6-2Ts and GW 41XX 2-6-2Ts in 1954/5\. The book has nearly 40,000 words of text and around 300 black & white photographs.

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."