The Great Railroad Revolution (68 page)

3
. Don Phillips, “The Road to Rescue,”
Classic Trains
(Summer 2011): 28.

4
. Saunders,
Main Lines
, 59.

5
. Bob Johnston, “Amtrak's Critical Turns, ”
Trains
(July 2011): 27.

6
. Saunders,
Main Lines
, 36.

7
. Ibid., 3, 21.

8
. Richard Saunders Jr.,
Merging Lines: American Railroads, 1900–1970
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), 294.

9
. Others have popped up too, notably at Folkston, Georgia.

10
. The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway is just 150 miles longer.

11
. Douglas,
All Aboard
, 255.

12
. Dan Machalaba, “What to Do About NIMBYs,”
Trains
(September 2010): 42–49.

13
. Sarah H. Gordon,
Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929
(Elephant Paperbacks, 1997), 280.

14
. John F. Stover,
American Railroads
(University of Chicago Press, 1961), 217.

Compiling a concise bibliography out of the wealth of American railroad literature is as difficult as making the choices over the content of this book. So this list is by no means comprehensive, but merely reflects my sources, prejudices, and preferences and is highly selective, as I have only included those that I found particularly useful. There are many other books that I have quoted, and the references can be found in the Notes. Nevertheless, this brief bibliography will give a few sources for further reading. I would, too, be dishonest if I did not confess to using at times that wonderful resource Wikipedia, which has definitely improved in terms of accuracy over the years, even if there are, inevitably, some errors. However, books are not infallible, either, as I have discovered when coming across conflicting sources.

First, the general books. Of course, one of the reasons I was stimulated into writing this one was the lack of a recent concise book on American railroads. Two of the best are more than a half century old. Stewart H. Holbrook's work
The Story of American Railroads
(Bonanza Books, 1947) is idiosyncratic, lengthy, anecdotal, and fun. John F. Stover's
American Railroads
(University of Chicago Press, 1961) is rather the opposite, sober and full of hard facts. Charlton Ogburn,
Railroads: The Great American Adventure
(National Geographic Society, 1977), is an eccentric pictorial account with a lot of good anecdotes, and
High Iron: A Book of Trains
(Bonanza Books, 1938) is an evocative tome by the legendary railroad writer Lucius Beebe.
Railroads Triumphant
by Albro Martin (Oxford University Press, 1992) has plenty of good history but is rather marred by the bad-tempered tone and the incoherent structure. The best of the more recent ones is probably George H. Douglas,
All Aboard: The Railroad in American Life
(Paragon House, 1992), a solid and well-written book. These general books cover the early years of the railroads, while
The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860
(1951; reprint, Harper Torchbooks, 1968) by George Rogers Taylor puts the development of the railroads into a wider perspective.

There are numerous coffee table–type books that are dominated by pictures, and I can't really recommend any because of the lack of narrative and the rather random selection of material. The
Encyclopedia of North American Railroads
(Indiana University Press, 2007) edited by William D. Middleton, George M. Smerk, and Roberta L. Diehl, on the other hand, is thorough and informative, though as with all such books it is sometimes not as comprehensive as you expect when you are after that little nugget of information.

My focus on social history led me to two thoughtful but very different books. James A. Ward,
Railroads and the Character of America, 1820–1887
(University of Tennessee Press, 1986), examines the psychology that led to the widespread support for the railroads, while Sarah H. Gordon's
Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929
(Elephant Paperbacks, 1997) is a thorough analysis of their impact for that period and is the best sociological assessment I came across.

On the Civil War, the vast literature rarely examines the role of railroads. Two classic exceptions are Thomas Weber,
The Northern Railroads in the Civil War, 1861–1865
(1952; reprint, Indiana University Press, 1999), and George Edgar Turner,
Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War
(Bobbs-Merrill, 1953).
The American Railroad Network, 1861–1890
(1956; reprint, University of Illinois Press, 2003) by George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu provides an excellent perspective on how much railroads had progressed by the end of the Civil War. This is an area, I suggest, that could do with a lot more mining, and I did come across a nice ghostwritten “memoir,”
Reflections of a Civil War Locomotive Engineer
by Diana Bailey Harris, based on contemporary letters (self-published, 2011).

The literature on the transcontinentals is so great that it is almost a whole category of its own and rather reflects the imbalance in American railroad history, which places far too much importance on this story in relation to the rest. I therefore confine myself to just a couple of mentions. The best standard works I found are David Haward Bain's
Empire Express
(Viking Penguin, 1999) and Wesley S. Griswold,
A Work of Giants
(Frederick Muller, 1962), but there are countless more good books. A fascinating recent addition, which questions much of the conventional thinking and many of the myths on the building of the first transcontinental, is
Railroaded
by Richard White (W. W. Norton, 2011).

Dee Brown's
Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow
(1977; reprint, Touchstone, 1994) is a classic account of how the railroads conquered the West, and
Last Train to Paradise
by Les Standiford (Three Rivers, 2002) is a detailed roller-coaster account of the crazy Florida Keys scheme by Henry Flagler. One other little gem I
came across is Robert Louis Stevenson's account of slumming it across America by train,
The Amateur Emigrant
(originally published posthumously, in 1895, but widely available, including with Carroll & Graf, 2002). Albro Martin,
Enterprise Denied: Origins of the Decline of American Railroads
(Columbia University Press, 1971), is excellent on the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission and its role in stymieing railroad investment. The old and dry
Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916
by Gabriel Kolko (Princeton University Press, 1965) proved to be a gem as a reliable account of the period. Geoffrey Freeman Allen's
Luxury Trains of the World
(Bison Books, 1979) has superb detail on the heyday of great American trains, as does his
Railways of the Twentieth Century
(Winchmore, 1983).

For more modern times, the two books by Richard Saunders Jr. are superb accounts of the railroads in the twentieth century:
Merging Lines
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), which covers the period 1900–1970, and its sequel,
Main Lines
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2003). Alfred Runte's rather angry
Allies of the Earth
(Truman State University Press, 2006) is an evocative study of how America allowed its passenger rail services to wither away, while Joseph Vranich's
Derailed
(St. Martin's Press, 1997) highlights Amtrak's failings.

I made extensive use of several histories of particular railroads, notably Joseph R. Daughen and Peter Binzen,
The Wreck of the Penn Central
(Little, Brown, 1971), written soon after the collapse, which gives it a nice immediacy; Lawrence H. Kaufman,
Leaders Count
, published by the Burlington Santa Fe itself in 2005 and therefore rather hagiographic; and H. Roger Grant,
Erie Lackawanna
(Stanford University Press, 1994). Another good account of the postwar crisis in the rail industry is Rush Loving Jr.,
The Men Who Loved Trains
(Indiana University Press, 2006).

On specific aspects of the story, George W. Hilton and John F. Due,
The Electric Urban Railways in America
(Stanford University Press, 1960), provides an almost encyclopedic account of the tragic story of the interurbans, a tale that is often neglected in railroad history; Mark Aldrich's book on safety,
Death Rode the Rails
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), includes a lot of data on accident rates, as well as offering a coherent narrative; and Robert C. Post tells the story of city transportation technologies in
Urban Mass Transit
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

Finally, if I were to award a prize for the best book on a railroad topic, it would have to go to Theodore Kornweibel Jr.'s
Railroads in the African American Experience
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), which is groundbreaking, comprehensive, beautifully illustrated, and superbly written and highlights an area that has been widely neglected.

Accidents,
190–200
,
194–196
,
226
,
227
,
318
,
351
,
354

and bridges,
161
,
193–194
,
256

Frankford Junction accident,
323–324

and livestock,
42
,
81–82
,
196

Picnic Train disaster,
195–196

and Vanderbilt, and Camden & Amboy Railroad,
80–81
,
240

See also
Derailments Acela Express
,
351

Adams, Alvin,
82–83

Adams, John Quincy,
81

Adirondack Express
,
263

Adirondacks,
224

Adler, Dorothy,
124

Alaska Railroad,
307

Albany & Schenectady Railroad,
67

Albany & Susquehanna Railroad,
247–248

Alcohol,
143
,
206

Aldrich, Mark,
191
,
195

Allen, Geoffrey Freeman,
188
,
190
,
314–315
,
328

Allen, Horatio,
17–18
,
20

Allen, William Frederick,
219

Ambrose, Stephen E.,
143

Ambulance and hospital trains,
115

American Railroad Journal
,
60
,
89
,
121
,
154
,
191

American Railway Union,
235–236
,
246

Ames, Oakes,
137
,
157

Amtrak,
261
,
334
,
341–345
,
350–352
,
356–357
,
358

Andrews Raid,
xxii

Androscoggin & Kennebec Railroad,
61

Annapolis & Elk Ridge Railroad,
98

Anthracite,
17
,
268–269
,
334

Antietam, Battle of,
106

Arlington National Cemetery,
98–99

Armored trains,
116

Army engineers,
33