With their speed and geographical reach, America’s railroads reigned supreme through much of the nineteenth century, knitting together the sprawling country as no other mode of transportation was able to do. Around 1900, however, an upstart challenger—the automobile— arrived on the scene. At first regarded as little more than a plaything for the wealthy, the new invention rapidly gained popularity, especially after Henry Ford’s innovative mass-production techniques made cars affordable to the middling classes. In this engaging book, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle—renowned experts on the wide-ranging effects of automobility on American life—examine the various ways in which the railroads responded to their new competition, not just from the automobile itself but from its close cousins, the motor truck and motor bus, through several decades up to the eve of World War II. Drawing on extensive research in the trade publications of the period, the authors examine the development of interurban and intraurban rail transport, the transition from steam to electric and diesel power, and the railroads’ close involvement in the nascent trucking and passenger-bus industries. They devote a chapter to the places where trains and automobiles came most directly and dangerously into conflict—railroad crossings—and pay special attention throughout to the key role of government in the competition, whether through antitrust legislation, taxation, or the building of the “good roads� that were so necessary to the rise of auto, truck, and bus transport. Although the railroads remain with us, it was the automobile that emerged as the predominant transportation form, owing to its promise of speed, convenience, flexibility of movement, and, most important, self-gratification. In a country that places such high value on individual freedom, the romance of motoring has proven irresistible.

Railways have always been at the heart of British politics, from their early beginnings in the 1830s through to the present day. And the sharpest debates have been on the issue of ownership and accountability. The book charts the railways under nationalisation (1948-1993) and outlines rail privatisation in both the UK and other European countries. Paul Salveson gives credit to recent achievements but attacks the fragmentation, increased costs and higher fares that have become a feature of Britain's privatised railways. Arguing against the return to a centralised 'British Rail', Salveson instead suggests a new model which goes with the flow of current plans to devolve rail responsibilities within the English regions. The author was the originator of the highly successful community rail movement, and he argues for more direct involvement of local communities in their railways. He outlines recent examples of local social enterprises bringing thriving services back to semi-abandoned stations, and shows how Britain's heritage railway sector has been a successful model for not-for-profit rail enterprise. Combining historical analysis with personal experience and political theory, Salveson's research suggests an alternative ownership system for the rail networks and a possible future for Britain's transport system. The book also includes a foreword by Maria Eagle, the shadow secretary of state for transport.

This book is the first substantial study in any language of one of revolutionary Russia's most distinguished and controversial engineers - Iurii Vladimirovich Lomonosov (1876-1952). Not only does it provide an outline of his remarkable life and career, it also explores the relationship between science, technology and transport that developed in late tsarist and early Soviet Russia. Lomonosov's importance extends well beyond his scientific and engineering achievements thanks to the rich variety and public prominence of his professional and political activities. His generation - Lenin's generation - was inevitably at the forefront of Russian life from the 1910s to the 1930s, and Lomonosov took his place there as one of the country's best known and ultimately notorious engineers. As well as an innovative engineer who campaigned to enhance the role of science, he played a major role in shaping and administering the Russian railways, and undertook several diplomatic and scientific missions to the West during the early years of the Revolution. Falling from political favour during an assignment in Germany (1923-1927), he achieved notoriety in Russia as a 'non-returner' by apparently declining to return home. Thereby escaping probable arrest and execution, he began a new life abroad (1927-1952) which included a research post at the California Institute of Technology in 1929-1930, collaborative projects with the famous physicist P.L. Kapitsa in Cambridge, a long-time association with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, and work for the British War Office during the Second World War. From Marxist revolutionary to American academic, this study reveals Lomonosov's extraordinary life. Drawing on a wide variety of official Russian sources, as well as Lomonosov's own diaries and memoirs, a vivid portrait of his life is presented, offering a better understanding of how science, technology and politics interacted in early-twentieth-century Russia.

Profiting from the Plains looks at two inextricably linked historical movements in the United States: the westward expansion of the great Northern Railway and the agricultural development of the northern plains. Claire Strom explores the persistent, idiosyncratic attempts by the Great Northern to boost agricultural production along its rail routes from St. Paul to Seattle between 1878 and 1917. Lacking a federal land grant, the Great Northern could not make money through land sales like other railways. It had to rely on haulage to make a profit, and the greatest potential for increasing haulage lay in farming. The energetic and charismatic owner of the Great Northern Railway, James J. Hill, spearheaded most of the initiatives undertaken by his corporation to boost agricultural production. He tried, often unsuccessfully, to persuade farmers of the profitability of his methods, which were largely based on his personal farming experience. When Hill's initial efforts to increase haulage failed, he shifted his focus to working with outside agencies and institutions, often providing them with the funding to pursue projects he hoped would profit his railroad. At the time, state and federal agencies were also promoting agricultural development through irrigation, conservation, and dryland farming, but their agendas often clashed with those of the Great Northern Railway. Because Hill failed to grasp the extent to which politicians' goals differed from those of the railroad, his use of federal expertise to promote agricultural change often backfired. But despite these obstacles, the railroad magnate ironically remained among the last defenders of the small-scale farmer modeled on Jeffersonian idealism. This fascinating story of railroad politics and development ties into themes of corporate and federal sponsorship, which are increasingly recognized as fundamental to western history. As the first scholarly examination of James J. Hill's agricultural enterprises, Profiting from the Plains makes an important contribution to the biography of the popular and controversial Hill, as well as to western and environmental history.

"Follow the Flag" offers the first authoritative history of the Wabash Railroad Company, a once vital interregional carrier. The corporate saga of the Wabash involved the efforts of strong-willed and creative leaders, but this book provides more than traditional business history. Noted transportation historian H. Roger Grant captures the human side of the Wabash, ranging from the medical doctors who created an effective hospital department to the worker-sponsored social events. And Grant has not ignored the impact the Wabash had on businesses and communities in the "Heart of America." Like most major American carriers, the Wabash grew out of an assortment of small firms, including the first railroad to operate in Illinois, the Northern Cross. Thanks in part to the genius of financier Jay Gould, by the early 1880s what was then known as the Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway reached the principal gateways of Chicago, Des Moines, Detroit, Kansas City, and St. Louis. In the 1890s, the Wabash gained access to Buffalo and direct connections to Boston and New York City. One extension, spearheaded by Gould's eldest son, George, fizzled. In 1904 entry into Pittsburgh caused financial turmoil, ultimately throwing the Wabash into receivership. A subsequent reorganization allowed the Wabash to become an important carrier during the go-go years of the 1920s and permitted the company to take control of a strategic "bridge" property, the Ann Arbor Railroad. The Great Depression forced the company into another receivership, but an effective reorganization during the early days of World War II gave rise to a generally robust road. Its famed Blue Bird streamliner, introduced in 1950 between Chicago and St. Louis, became a widely recognized symbol of the "New Wabash." When "merger madness" swept the railroad industry in the 1960s, the Wabash, along with the Nickel Plate Road, joined the prosperous Norfolk & Western Railway, a merger that worked well for all three carriers. Immortalized in the popular folk song "Wabash Cannonball," the midwestern railroad has left important legacies. Today, forty years after becoming a "fallen flag" carrier, key components of the former Wabash remain busy rail arteries and terminals, attesting to its historic value to American transportation.

A standard track gauge - the distance between the two rails - enables connecting railway lines to exchange traffic. But despite the benefits of standardization, early North American railways used six different gauges extensively, and even today breaks of gauges at national borders and within such countries as India and Australia are expensive burdens on commerce. In "Tracks across Continents, Paths through History", Douglas J. Puffert offers a global history of railway track gauges, examining early choices and the dynamic process of diversity and standardization that resulted. Drawing on the economic theory of path dependence, and grounded in economic, technical, and institutional realities, this innovative volume traces how early historical events, and even idiosyncratic personalities, have affected choices of gauges ever since, despite changing technology and understandings of which gauges are optimal. Puffert also uses this history to develop new insights in the theory of path dependence. "Tracks across Continents, Paths through History" will be essential reading for anyone interested in how history and economics inform each other.

Railway expansion was the great industrial project of the late 19th century, and the Great Powers built railways at speed and reaped great commercial benefits. The greatest imperial dream of all was to connect the might of Europe to the potential riches of the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire. In 1903 Imperial Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, began to construct a railway which would connect Berlin to the Ottoman city of Baghdad, and project German power all the way to the Persian Gulf. The Ottoman Emperor, Abdul Hamid II, meanwhile, saw the railway as a means to bolster crumbling Ottoman control of Arabia. Using new Ottoman Turkish sources, Murat Ozyuksel shows how the Berlin-Baghdad railway became a symbol of both rising European power and declining Ottoman fortunes. It marks a new and important contribution to our understanding of the geopolitics of the Middle East before World War I, and will be essential reading for students of empire, Industrial History and Ottoman Studies.

A first evaluation of the physical impact of railway construction on the British coast The building of railways has had a profound but largely ignored physical impact on Britain's coasts. This book explores the coming of railways to the edge of Britain, the ruthlessness of the companies involved and the transformation of our coasts through the destruction or damage to the environment. In many places today, railways are the first defence against the sea and similarly the embankments of long-closed lines act as sea walls. It is ironic, at a time when climate change is very much favouring rail as a means of transport, that many lines are increasingly exposed to extreme weather and the very actions associated with their construction have exacerbated coastal erosion. With the benefit of hindsight, many coastal railways have been built in locations that would not have been chosen today. As our climate changes and storminess potentially increases, what might be the implications for some of Britain's lines on the edge? Key features: First evaluation of the physical impact of railway construction on the British coast Unique combination of environmental and historical research Timely given the impact of the storms of January and February 2014 Covers the breaching of the South Devon, Cambrian and Cumbrian coastal lines

Few scenes capture the American experience so eloquently as that of a lonely train chugging across the vastness of the Great Plains, or snaking through tortuous high mountain passes. Although this vision was eclipsed for a time by the rise of air travel and trucking, American railroads have enjoyed a rebirth in recent years as profitable freight carriers. An account of the rise, decline, and rebirth of railroads in the United States, this survey traces their history from the first lines that helped eastern seaports capture western markets to the modern newly-revitalized industry. John Stover describes the growth of the railroads' monopoly, with the consequent need for state and federal regulations; relates the vital part played by the railroads during the Civil War and the two World Wars; and charts the railroads' decline due to the advent of air travel and trucking during the 1950s. The author recounts the remarkable recovery of the railroads, along with other pivotal events of the industry's recent history. During the 1960s declining passenger traffic and excessive federal regulation led to the federally-financed creation of Amtrak to revive passenger service and Conrail to provide freight service on bankrupt northeastern railroads. The real saviour for the railroads, however, proved to be the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which brought prosperity to rail freight carriers by substantially deregulating the industry. By 1995, renewed railroad freight traffic had reached nearly twice its former peak in 1944.

All about the railroad: old coaches made new, ancient steam engines, historic hotels, stations and campsites along 64 miles of scenic track unlike any other railroad in the USA and the only one ever to penetrate to the heart of a national park. On 17 September 1989, 88 years to the day from the date the first steam engine puffed to the Grand Canyon, a reborn Grand Canyon train made its way from Williams to the Grand Canyon along the same historic route. The resurrection of the Grand Canyon Railway signifies more than steam and thunder, nostalgia and history. It is part of a growing recognition of the need to soften the environmental impact made by four million annual visitors to the Canyon. The railroad uses a clean burning fuel of oil and grey water for engine power and may reduce peak motor traffic in the Canyon park by as much as 4000 vehicles per day.

Commuter rail agencies provide mobility to millions of people across the country, often using Amtrak infrastructure and services. Given these interactions, an abrupt Amtrak cessation could have a significant impact on commuter rail operations. Amtrak's chronic financial problems and recent budget proposals make such cessation possibility. This book was asked to examine:(1) The extent to which commuter rail agencies rely on Amtrak for access to infrastructure and services,(2) Issues that commuter rail agencies would face if Amtrak abruptly ceased to provide them with services and infrastructure access, and(3) The options available to commuter rail agencies should Amtrak abruptly cease to provide those services and infrastructure access.

The diesel locomotive sent shock waves through rigid corporate cultures and staid government regulators. For some, the new technology promised to be a source of enormous profits; for others, the railroad industry seemed a threat to their very livelihoods. Evolution of the American Diesel Locomotive introduces the reader to the important technological advances that gave rise to diesel engines, examining not only their impact on locomotive design, but also their impact on the economic and social landscapes. J. Parker Lamb describes the development of these technologies, allowing the reader to fully understand how they were integrated and formed a commercially successful locomotive. Like its companion volume, Perfecting the American Steam Locomotive (IUP, 2003), this book emphasizes the role of the leading engineers whose innovations paved the way for critical breakthroughs. Rail fans will appreciate this authoritative work.

Though the history of the German railway system is often associated with the transportation of Jews to labor and death camps, Todd Presner looks instead to the completion of the first German railway lines and their role in remapping the cultural geography and intellectual history of Germany's Jews.

Treating the German railway as both an iconic symbol of modernity and a crucial social, technological, and political force, Presner advances a groundbreaking interpretation of the ways in which mobility is inextricably linked to German and Jewish visions of modernity. Moving beyond the tired model of a failed German-Jewish dialogue, Presner emphasizes the mutual entanglement of the very categories of German and Jewish and the many sites of contact and exchange that occurred between German and Jewish thinkers.

Turning to philosophy, literature, and the history of technology, and drawing on transnational cultural and diaspora studies, Presner charts the influence of increased mobility on interactions between Germans and Jews. He considers such major figures as Kafka, Heidegger, Arendt, Freud, Sebald, Hegel, and Heine, reading poetry next to philosophy, architecture next to literature, and railway maps next to cultural history.

Rather than a conventional, linear history that culminates in the tragedy of the Holocaust, Presner produces a cultural mapping that articulates a much more complex story of the hopes and catastrophes of mobile modernity. By focusing on the spaces of encounter emblematically represented by the overdetermined triangulation of Germans, Jews, and trains, he introduces a new genealogy for the study of European and German-Jewish modernity.

Rising from the corporate wreckage of the 1970s, when even the nation's largest railroad filed for bankruptcy, American railroads are once again a major part of the global economy. Richard Saunders brings to life this amazing story of revitalization, showing how a combination of creatively structured aid from the public sector and talented private management gave railroads new momentum. By 2002, American railroads carried five times the tonnage they hauled in their former heyday, and they did this with one-tenth of the employees. How did this revolution happen? Saunders shows how limited, disciplined, and politically risky government intervention stabilized a sinking industry. Whatever their results for other industries, President Carter's deregulation and President Reagan's tax revisions restored the railroads' financial health. Container cars and other new technologies also helped to transform inefficient railroads into vibrant enterprises. Corporate strategies varied on the road to success, and even skilled managers encountered pitfalls, but the railroads' resurgence and growth proved to be unstoppable. After the merger mania of the mid-twentieth century, the main U.S. railroad systems evolved into seven transregional corporate giants. Of the "Super Seven," only four survived past the 1990s-the Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific, and Burlington Northern-Santa Fe. These four set the standard at a time when no other major railroads could afford the new technologies needed to turn a profit. A sequel to Merging Lines, this engagingly written account brings the story of American railroads up to the twenty-first century. As American transport enters the twenty-first century, the iron horse that consolidated the Industrial Revolution once again flexes its muscle.

Since its creation in 1970, Amtrak has sought to relieve railroad companies of costly passenger operations while continuing US rail service. However, Amtrak has come under fire for its own inability to turn a profit, though passenger rail service is historically unprofitable. Congress has mandated that Amtrak show an ability to cover its own expenses, which the company has said it will do. As train travel becomes more important to the nation in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks, Amtrak's problems and viability are definite matters of national security. This book analyses the various issues surrounding Amtrak's past and future and includes a comprehensive bibliography.

Exploring the social, economic, and legal impact of the growth of the railroads, Sarah Gordon has written a richly informed narrative history of an American icon-with surprising conclusions. Where the railroads and their entrepreneurs are ordinarily celebrated for drawing together the vast geographical reaches of the union, Ms. Gordon finds that this accomplishment was achieved at high cost. Conflicts of interest-at local, state, and regional levels-characterized railroad growth at every stage. Despite the stated aims of government and the railroad corporations to promote settlement and commerce, Ms. Gordon explains, the states lost control and lost the economic benefits of the roads that ran through them. Smaller towns withered as people and money flowed to larger cities. By 1900 the union that had emerged reflected the worst fears of railroad critics. The South and West had been settled, but wealth had become so concentrated in cities that rural life had lost its attraction. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, including literature, diaries, and memoirs, Sarah Gordon has constructed an absorbing story of apparent triumph and real loss.

Originally published by UNC Press in 1952, The Railroads of the Confederacy tells the story of the first use of railroads on a major scale in a major war. Robert Black presents a complex and fascinating tale, with the railroads of the American South playing the part of tragic hero in the Civil War: at first vigorous though immature; then overloaded, driven unmercifully, starved for iron; and eventually worn out--struggling on to inevitable destruction in the wake of Sherman's army, carrying the Confederacy down with them. With maps of all the Confederate railroads and contemporary photographs and facsimiles of such documents as railroad tickets, timetables, and soldiers' passes, the book will captivate railroad enthusiasts as well as readers interested in the Civil War. |The only comprehensive history of the South's use of railroads during the Civil War.

George H. and Constance M. Hilton Book Award Celebrated in history and song, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company - the Rock Island Line - was a powerful Midwestern railroad that once traversed thirteen states with its fast freights and Rocket passenger trains but eventually succumbed to government regulation and a changing economy. Gregory Schneider chronicles the Rock Island's painful decline and along the way reveals some of the key problems within the American railroad industry during the post-World War II era. Schneider takes readers back to a time when railroads still clung to a storied past to offer new insight into the devastating impact of economic policymaking during the 1960s and 1970s. Schneider recounts the largest railroad liquidation in American history - as well as one of the most successful reorganizations in American business - to depict the demise and ultimate collapse of Rock Island as part of a broader account of hard times in the railroad industry beginning in the 1970s. Schneider weaves a complex story of how business, politics, government bureaucracy, and individual greed helped to limit the economic possibilities of the railroad industry and catapult the Rock Island Railroad into oblivion. Weakened by a troubled economy, the Rock fell victim to inept management and labor union intransigence; but Schneider also reveals how government regulations and price controls prevented innovation, hindered capital acquisition, and favored other forms of transportation that lie beyond the scope of regulation. Railroads were even hurt by taxation of property and real estate while competitors were able to use government-subsidized highways and airports without having to pay taxes to fund them. Now that America has gone on to witness the collapse of such mammoth firms as Enron and Lehman Brothers, not to mention the bankruptcy and bailout of General Motors, the story of the Rock provides an instructive lesson in how a major American enterprise was allowed to fall victim to forces often beyond its control - while the bailout of the Penn Central, at the expense of smaller lines like Rock Island, helped initiate the era of "too big to fail." For economic historians and railroad buffs alike, Rock Island Requiem is a well-researched and informative work - and a mighty good read.

From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, railways became increasingly important in the lives of a growing number of Indians. While allowing millions to collectively experience the endemic discomforts of third-class travel, the public opportunities for proximity and contact created by railways simultaneously compelled colonial society to confront questions about exclusion, difference, and community. It was not only passengers, however, who were affected by the transformations that railways wrought. Even without boarding a train, one could see railway tracks and embankments reshaping familiar landscapes, realise that train schedules represented new temporal structures, fear that spreading railway links increased the reach of contagion, and participate in new forms of popular politics focused around railway spaces. Tracks of Change explores how railway technology, travel, and infrastructure became increasingly woven into everyday life in colonial India, how people negotiated with the growing presence of railways, and how this process has shaped India's history.

From the time the first tracks were laid in the early nineteenth century, the railroad has occupied a crucial place in America's historical imagination. Now, for the first time, Eric Arnesen gives us an untold piece of that vital American institution--the story of African Americans on the railroad. African Americans have been a part of the railroad from its inception, but today they are largely remembered as Pullman porters and track layers. The real history is far richer, a tale of endless struggle, perseverance, and partial victory. In a sweeping narrative, Arnesen re-creates the heroic efforts by black locomotive firemen, brakemen, porters, dining car waiters, and redcaps to fight a pervasive system of racism and job discrimination fostered by their employers, white co-workers, and the unions that legally represented them even while barring them from membership. Decades before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, black railroaders forged their own brand of civil rights activism, organizing their own associations, challenging white trade unions, and pursuing legal redress through state and federal courts. In recapturing black railroaders' voices, aspirations, and challenges, Arnesen helps to recast the history of black protest and American labor in the twentieth century.

This beautifully written, meticulously detailed, highly engaging book is a rare treat. It evokes a vanished world of railways that achieved extraordinary things logistically while using what is by modern standards distinctly old-fashioned technology. Lifelong railwayman Terry Collins takes the reader on a journey into the heart of what working on the railways between 1962 and 1996 was like, from the days of steam, to the dawn of the modern railway age. The book is also a real eye-opener about many of the behind-the-scenes incidents the public never hears about. 'Never a Dull Moment' is an absolutely unforgettable book As Terry himself says: 'I really enjoyed working on the railways. We had our tragedies, sadly, but we also dealt with many other challenging incidents, including some bizarre ones, and when we won, against the odds, and got the trains and people moving again, it was a great feeling! I say "we" because this book is also very much about the many people in the signal boxes, Traffic Control, stations, yards and on the track, that I worked with, some of them "larger than life" characters, but almost without exception, determined to win. And we did!'