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    Fifty Railroads that Changed the Course of History

    by Bill Laws

    Hardcover

    $29.95
    $29.95

    Temporarily Out of Stock Online

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    • ISBN-13: 9781770851696
    • Publisher: Firefly Books, Limited
    • Publication date: 08/11/2013
    • Pages: 224
    • Product dimensions: 6.80(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

    Bill Laws is a journalist and writer. He is the author of Fifty Animals That Changed the Course of History, as well as numerous titles on philosophy and history. He lives in the UK, where he is conducting doctoral research in sociology at South Bank University, London.

    Table of Contents

    Contents

      Merthyr Tydfil Railway
      Swansea and Mumbles Railway
      Stockton and Darlington Railway
      Liverpool and Manchester Railway
      Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
      South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company
      Dublin and Kingstown Railway
      Brussels to Melchelen Railway
      Nuremberg and Fürth Railway
      Paris to Le Pecq Railway
      Grand Junction and London to Birmingham Railways
      Tsarskoye Selo Railway
      Ferrocarril de Camagüey a Nuevitas
      York and North Midland Railway
      Great Western Railway
      Leicester and Loughborough Railway
      Sheffield, Ashton under Lyne and Manchester Railway
      Paris to Le Havre Railway
      Georgetown and Plaisance Railroad
      Great Indian Peninsula Railway
      Semmering Railway

      Panama Railroad
      Grand Crimean Central Railway
      Chicago to St. Louis Railroad
      Hannibal to St. Joseph Railroad
      Metropolitan Railway
      Central Pacific Railroad
      Port Chalmers Railway
      Canadian Pacific Railway
      Jerusalem to Jaffa Railway
      Highland Railway
      Valtellina, Italy
      Cape to Cairo Railway
      Jingzhang Railway
      Grand Central Terminal
      Trans-Siberian Railway
      Allied Railroad Supply Lines
      Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta Railway
      Sydney City Railway
      Berlin to Hamburg Railway
      Prague to Liverpool Street Station, London
      Southern Railway
      Auschwitz Spur
      Burma to Siam Railway
      Dutch Railways
      Tokaido Railway
      Bay Area Rapid Transit
      Talyllyn
      Railway
      Paris to Lyon Railway
      Channel Tunnel

    Further Reading
    Index
    Image Credits

    Preface

    Introduction

    "When I closed my eyes this sensation of flying was quite delightful, and strange beyond description: yet strange as it was, I had a perfect sense of security, and not the slightest fear."
    Actress and writer Fanny Kemble, opening of the Liverpool to Manchester railroad, 1838

    Railroads have impacted on the lives of almost everyone on the planet. Since they arrived in the early 1800s, their steely sinews have threaded their way through history, nudging and elbowing it in unexpected directions.

    Changing Landscapes and Passenger Travel
    Railroads modernized the towns they touched and caused the downfall of the ones they left behind: they carried cargo into the most inaccessible places and transformed forever the traditional ways of life there. Trains brought a distinctive cacophony to the urban scene: station bells, bursts of steam, the scream of a whistle, carriage couplings clattering in rail yards, and the ring of the wheel-tapper's hammer checking for cracked steel.

    The British monarch Queen Victoria was perfectly satisfied with this progress. On her first railroad journey, 18 miles (29 km) along the GWR or Great Western Railway to Buckingham Palace in 1842, she declared: "We arrived here yesterday morning, having come by the railroad from Windsor, in half an hour, free from dust and crowd and heat, and I am quite charmed with it." The Duke of Wellington, reflecting the sentiments of many of The Queen's citizens, had taken the opposite view. In 1830 he declared he saw "no reason to suppose these machines will ever force themselves into general use." While the railroads increased and multiplied, the anxieties of passengers remained much the same: Have I missed the train? Am I on the right platform? Is my luggage safe? Railroads undoubtably imposed themselves on the landscape. "There was probably more picturesqueness about the old method of traveling, for a stage coach harmonized better with the landscape than a puffing, smoking steam engine with its train of practical looking cars," wrote the regretful R. Richardson B.A. in Cassell's Family Magazine of 1875. He nevertheless acknowledged: "What we have lost in picturesqueness we have undoubtedly gained in convenience."

    Making Tracks Across the Globe
    With their speeding locomotives, luxury carriages and romantic boat trains, the railroads reached a zenith in the early twentieth century using the latest technology. Although the essential elements—train, tracks and rolling stock—were standard, idiosyncratic national characteristics were apparent from the start. The dominance of the railroad was complete, paving the way across the world with its routes and adopting country-specific structures, while two world wars battled on.

    By the mid-twentieth century railroads were exhausted. Polluting, inefficient, uncomfortable, monopolistic and expensive, they had run out of favor. Their demise was accompanied, and exacerbated, by the rush for the road, a development that squandered dwindling natural resources and left a bill for everyone but the polluter to pay. Then in 1964 a streamlined train slid, like a vision from the future, into Tokyo station. Within a decade high-speed railroads and rapid transit systems were racing to change history again, leaving in their wake a charm of pleasant old lines and railroad memories. As railroad engineer George Stephenson's biographer Samuel Smiles put it in 1868: "Notwithstanding all the faults and imperfections that are alleged against railroads ... we think they must nevertheless be recognized as by far the most valuable means of communication ... that has yet been given to the world."

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    Praise for previous titles in the series:
    Fifty Minerals That Changed the Course of History
    Interesting, affordable and readable.... Offers the reader an opportunity to delve further into each mineral's historical significance in an accessible way.
    — Booklist

    Fifty Animals That Changed the Course of History
    An original approach that links the biological sciences to the social sciences... students and general readers will find many interesting stories within these pages.
    — American Reference Books Annual

    The new title in the series, Fifty Railroads that Changed the Course of History, is a handsome, illustrated survey of the most important historical and contemporary railway lines around the world. Filled with unusual and unexpected stories and facts, it will captivate a wide audience, from the curious browser to researching students.

    The book organizes the railroads chronologically, considering each according to its greatest impact on Social, Commercial, Political, Engineering, and Military history. Maps plus more than 200 elegant drawings, photographs and paintings as well as dozens of sidebars highlight the concise, engaging text.

    The fifty railroads span history, from the first in public passenger travel (Wales, 1807) to Japan's speed-record breaking "Bullet." Exotic locales reflect the map of colonialism (Guyana to transport sugar, India to carry cotton and arms). Railroads moved troops (the Crimea, the American Civil War, the Boer War) and united vast lands (Canadian Pacific Railway, Trans-Siberian). They transported horror (Auschwitz Ker), saved the Railway Children, and went underground to cross the English Channel.

    Fifty Railroads that
    Changed the Course of History     features rail barons, politicians, disasters, crime, weather, geology, great artists, fraudsters and animals, a dynamic cast of characters and a mind-spinning whirlwind of fact, trivia and conversation starters.

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