The Iron Way
by John and Catherine Angle Professor in the Humanities William G Thomas
A new perspective on the central role of the railroads and slavery in the coming, fighting, and aftermath of the Civil War. Beginning with Frederick Douglass's escape from slavery in 1838 on the railroad, and ending with the driving of the golden spike to link the transcontinental railroad in 1869, this book charts a critical period of American expansion and national formation, one largely dominated by the dynamic growth of railroads and telegraphs. William G. Thomas brings new evidence to bear...
History is everywhere, and is never as complete as when it can be accessed on a part of history itself. The locomotive is one of the great steps in progress of civilisation that undoubtably connects us to land and history that was shaped by the machine itself. Although a basic form of railway, or rutway, did exist in Ancient Greek and Roman times – notably the ship trackway between Diolkos and the Isthmus of Corinth around 600 BC – it would take several thousand years before the first fare-payi...
From the early 1800s and for nearly 170 years, steam locomotives were built in Great Britain and Ireland, by a variety of firms, large and small. James Lowe spent many years accumulating a considerable archive of material on the History of the locomotive building industry, from its early beginnings at the dawn of railways, until the end of steam locomotive construction in the 1960s. British Steam Locomotive Builders was first published in 1975 and has not been in print for some years. This usefu...
Uniquely among Britain's railways, the Great Western Railway retained its identity from the time of its incorporation in 1835 until nationalisation in 1948. This was one of the great railways, so much so that for some enthusiasts it was the railway, even attracting such epithets as 'God's Wonderful Railway' among the more dedicated. Even so, the amalgamations of 1923 saw the company absorb many smaller concerns, so that the post-grouping GWR was in some respects a different railway from that had...
Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway
by John Schmale and Kristina Schmale
An American Railroad Builder, John Murray Forbes
by Henry Greenleaf Pearson
Gresley and his Locomotives (Locomotive Portfolio)
by Tim Hillier-Graves
The story of Gresley and his locomotives is a well-trodden path. But our view of his achievements is a blinkered one because it fails to recognise all the other people who played a part in his work. As the leading American aviation engineer Paul S Baker wrote in 1945 the day of one-man engineering is long gone. You might as well print the organisation table of the engineering department when trying to assign credit for a particular design'. To Gresley must go great credit for many of the LNER'...
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 a...
The Oxford Companion to British Railway History
Of all the products of the Industrial Revolution, none left its mark on the landscape of Britain, or changed the lives of the British people, more than the railway. The encyclopedic Oxford Companion to British Railway History reveals, for the first time, the full story of this remarkable achievement: the inspired pioneers, the unprecedented feats of engineering, the romance, and the reality. From the primitive wagonways of the seventeenth century, through the eras of horse, steam, diesel, and el...