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.

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

In 1963 Dr Beeching's infamous report signalled the end for over 15,000 miles of track, a third of Britain's stations, and for 70,000 jobs, as well as making irrevocable changes to the way of life of many consumers. Much misery was caused and Beeching's name was muddied, but in hindsight the report probably did more than any other single factor to preserve the nation's railway heritage. Without the Beeching cuts, much of the locomotives, stock, tracks, signals and signs would have crumbled, been forgotten or rotted. However, the gentle railway gradients lend themselves perfectly to walkways and cycle paths; buildings have been refurbished; memorabilia now commands prices at auction which would astonish those who painted the metal. And of course, the heritage lines continue to draw many thousands of visitors each year. After the initial shock of the cuts, this fresh appraisal considers these benefits and more, which may not have come about without the Beeching Report.

An ex-railwayman's recollections of working the footplate on fast express steam trains in the late 1940s and through the '50s

Fast train fireman Ken Issitt worked on the footplate from the late 1940s to 1960, experiencing firing some of the greatest locomotives from the Flying Scotsman to Coltimore and Blink Bonney. The work was hard and conditions were tough but little did he know at the time that he was experiencing the last years of steam. He would never have imagined the romantic associations the period evokes today. Through a number of short accounts the past comes vividly to life, via stories about train crashes, peasoup fogs, and fires going out. From the beginning of a shift, donning overalls and making up a packing, and from shunting in the marshalling yard to flying along with an express train at 80mph. Ken Issitt describes what life on the footplate was like across the last years of steam, his tales beautifully brought to life by Chris Bates's charming pen and ink drawings as well as photographs.

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.

&&LI&& Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:"; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} This engaging study provides an account of the independent railroad brotherhoods from the period of their formation in the 1860s and '70s to the consolidation of their power on the eve of World War I. By commanding the attention of U.S. presidents and establishing the eight-hour workday, railroad brotherhoods employed responsible trade unionism to their advantage. Paul Michel Taillon focuses on the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Order of Railway Conductors, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, and the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen to investigate the impact of these unions on early twentieth-century politics and society. Notorious for their conservative bent and exclusiveness based on race and trade, the unions also demonstrated a capacity for change and a particular acumen for negotiating in political and public circles, all but guaranteeing brotherhood survival. In highlighting the successes and failures of these railroad unions, Taillon shows how they employed capitalist principles; how they were influenced by considerations of gender, race, and class; and how they prompted momentous debates about the proper relationships among government, private enterprise, labor, and management.

Ever since the Stockton & Darlington Railway opened in 1825 the north-east of England has been at the heart of the railway system. Charlie Emett, ex-railwayman, author, and historian, has collected a fascinating selection of more than 250 photographs, all informatively captioned. His compilation takes the reader on a journey from these pioneering beginnings, through the revolutionary age of steam and the diesel era, to the birth of the electric expresses, drawn by the most powerful locomotives ever to run in Britain. All County Durham's branch lines, past and present, are included in this pictorial guide, together with the East Coast main line, while the importance of Darlington's workshops and Shildon's wagon works is not forgotten. Famous engines, signaling systems, personalities, and events of the region are all recorded here, offering the reader a comprehensive picture of railway life over the years.

Charles Tyson Yerkes's impact upon London was seismic and his legacy controversial. He made his fortune in the Chicago Street railways but his shady deals and turbulent private life led him to London seeking a new playground after he married his latest mistress, who was 40 years his junior. He undertook the electrification of the District Railway and constructed the tubes which developed into the Northern, Piccadilly, and Bakerloo lines. He bought up London Tramways and built the biggest power station in the world at Lots Road, Chelsea. He overcame obstacles at a time when state involvement was minimal and revolutionized travel for Londoners. The events of his life formed the basis for the Theodore Dreiser novels "The Financier," "The Titan," and "The Stoic," and the Yerkes crater on the moon is named in his honor. In the end, though, Yerkes's resources were drained by London's transport problems and when he died his affairs were in chaos.

"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.

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.

From its earliest days, the cinema has enjoyed a special kinship with the railroad, a mutual attraction based on similar ways of handling speed, visual perception, and the promise of a journey. "Parallel Tracks" is the first book to explore and explain this relationship in both historical and theoretical terms, blending film scholarship with railroad history. Describing the train as a mechanical double for the cinema, Lynne Kirby gives her romantic topic a compelling twist. She views the railroad/cinema romance in light of the technological and cultural instability underlying modernity and presents the railroad and cinema as complementary experiences that shaped the modern world and its subjects--the passengers and spectators who traveled through that world.
In wide-ranging and provocative analyses of dozens of silent films--icons of film history like "The General" and "The Great Train Robbery" as well as many that are rarely discussed--Kirby examines how trains and rail travel embodied concepts of spectatorship and mobility grounded in imperialism and the social, sexual, and racial divisions of modern Western culture. This analysis at the same time provides a detailed and largely unexamined history of the railroad in silent filmmaking. Kirby also devotes special attention to the similar ways in which the railroad and cinema structured the roles of men and women. As she demonstrates, these representations have had profound implications for the articulation of gender in our culture, a culture in some sense based on the machine as embodied by the train and the camera/projector.
Ultimately, this book reveals the profound and parallel impact that the railroad and the cinema have had on Western society and modern urban industrial culture. "Parallel Tracks" will be eagerly awaited by those involved in cinema studies, American studies, feminist theory, and the cultural study of modernity.

For almost 150 years, the influence of the Great Western Railway's workshops in Swindon extended well beyond the great walls which surrounded most of the complex, which at its height, covered over 320 acres. Although the works has now closed, its influence on the town it helped to create is as strong as ever. In this collection of old photographs drawn from the archives of the GWR Museum in Swindon, the reader is taken on a photographic tour of the great workshops, and the huge variety of activities which went on in the factory are well illustrated with many evocative pictures, mainly covering the period between 1900 and 1960. Swindon was justly famous for the quality of the locomotives and rolling stock it produced, but this book also tells the story of the men behind the machines. Rare and unpublished photographs show something of life for the railway worker both inside and outside the works, and it is hoped that this selection will give the reader some idea of what it was like to live in what many see as the archetypal 'Railway Town'.

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.

In 2001, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament adopted the so-called First Railway Package. Comprising three Directives, this was intended to open up the rail freight market to competition and help to improve rail's share of the overall freight market. In 2006, however, the Commission published a report concluding that the implementation of the Package was inadequate and has committed itself to recasting the Package. In this report, 'Recast of the First Rail Freight Package (HL Paper 90-I)', the Committee looks at which elements of the Package need amending and which need clarification.

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!'

For half a century from 1948, Scotland's railway system was operated, for the first time, as a complete administrative unit - but also as part of a nationalised system for the whole of the UK. Scottish Region soon developed its own character, with its own problems and potential. Yet it suffered the same fate as the rest of the system - lack of modernisation in the first ten years, the later supply of Diesel and electric traction equipment which was not properly tested, the Beeching axe and the asset stripping prior to privitisation. This is the first ever history of Scotland's BR.

How the railroads transformed American life between 1829 and 1929, and why the cost of their achievements was so damaging to the social and economic life of the nation. A quite wonderful book...richly textured and intellectually stimulating. Elizabeth Blackmar, Columbia University. Selected by Choice as an outstanding book for 1997."

The reader is taken on a visual journey across the railways of the USA, from New England to Nevada and from the cab of a steam locomotive to a cemetary for old rolling stock. Commentaries provide insight into the revitalization of train travel, a fixture of American life for over a century.