"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.
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