The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America

by Christian Wolmar

Overview

“A sweeping history of railroads in America” (New Yorker)

By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a lattice-work of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years, but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads, and the nation started to forget them.

In The Great Railroad Revolution, renowned railroad expert Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and fall of one of the greatest American endeavors. The time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its often-overlooked rail heritage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610391801
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	09/25/2012
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Christian Wolmar has written for major international newspapers and appears frequently on TV and radio as a commentator on transport issues. His previous books include the widely acclaimed The Subterranean Railway, To the Edge of the World, and The Liberation Line. He lives in London, UK. 

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Illustrations vii

Maps x

Introduction xix

1 The Railroads Win Out 1

2 A Passionate Affair 25

3 The Railroads Take Hold 51

4 The Battle Lines 89

5 Harnessing the Elephant 121

6 Railroads to Everywhere 159

7 Getting Better All the Time 181

8 The End of the Affair 215

9 All Kinds of Train 259

10 The Roots of Decline 293

11 A Narrow Escape 321

13 Renaissance without Passengers 341

Notes 362

A Note on Sources 379

Index 383

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Daily Telegraph (UK)
“This is the ninth book that Wolmar has written about trains of various kinds.  It is certainly among the best, incorporating, alongside some gripping and downright bizarre reports upon a century-long stretch of vastly improved transport and soaring economic growth… an account of the ‘sheer, almost unbelievable scale of corruption and graft’ from which brutal opportunists like Huntington, Stanford and Gould minted their undeserved millions... Enjoyably anecdotal.”

Sunday Times (UK)"(A) passionate and masterly history." The Guardian“Christian Wolmar is in love with railways. He writes constantly and passionately about them. He is their wisest, most detailed historian and a constant prophet of their rebirth. So America, from 1830 on, from a few, tentative miles of track to a quarter of a million miles only 80 years later, is a story that grips his imagination… the tangle of failure, frailty and faint-heartedness he unpicks here goes far beyond mere romance: it resonates and crosses borders of national experience; it tells us something vital about the nature of railways we still struggle to learn to this day… If you love the hum of the wheels and of history, then Christian Wolmar is your man.”

Camden  New Journal (London, UK) “In his new book, his ninth, a comprehensive, compulsive and compelling epic story of the American railroad, Christian Wolmar reveals how that revolution actually fuelled the nation’s rise to a world-status power with its new found ability to glue itself together into a cohesive economic force…. Wolmar’s magnificent saga tells graphically how it all happened, then collapsed as man’s love affair with trains transferred first to cars, then to airplanes and possibly next lock on to rockets into space….What is outstanding in his fascinating research is the detail, an encyclopedia of railway lore, myth and anecdote that could – and has – sustained many a film, TV series and novel.”

Publishers Weekly
“In a volume that will delight train buffs—and hopefully others—English historian and railway expert Wolmar… examines the rise and fall of railroads in America, with a detailed look at how they influenced and directed the growth of the country for more than a century. …The end result is a fascinating, even indispensable look at one of America’s essential historical components."

Kirkus Reviews
“Wolmar, it seems, has no purpose other than crafting a critical but admiring study of a triumph of engineering, and in this he has succeeded. A solid and, yes, concise look at the railroad’s past, with a rousing call at the end for a new and improved rail system to carry the nation forward.”

BOOKLIST
“Wolmar is clearly in love with his subject—it’s easy to imagine him as a sort of walking encyclopedia of railroad lore—and his enthusiasm for his material shines through on every page. He finds the decline and increasing irrelevance of the railroad—especially the passenger rails—a deeply saddening aspect of contemporary life, and he makes a convincing case that, in losing rail travel as a fundamental human experience, we’ve lost a hugely important part of ourselves and our history.”

Australian Financial Review
“Without the railroads, Wolmar contends, there would have been no United States. … The really interesting suggestion is that robber barons are a necessary evil, the drivers stoking the engine of American capitalism.”

Wall Street Journal“’The Great Railroad Revolution’ succeeds in showing how, ‘without the railroads, the United States would not have become the United States.’”

Christian Science Monitor“Readers… get to take a broad voyage through railroad vs. railroad battles (even including espionage), the Civil War (in which trains were crucial), and the ultimate decline of trains.”
Library Journal
“As he did for global railroad history in his Blood, Iron, and Gold, Wolmar masterfully condenses the history of American rail into a lively and lucid work that is highly recommended to all.”

Washington Independent Review of Books”Wolmar clearly wishes the railroads had remained more of a social, economic and transportation force in the United States. His fine book will likely make many feel the same way.”

The New Yorker“Wolmar’s sweeping history of railroads in America is rich in drama…He makes a good case that the rail system helped create not only America’s economy but its character.”

Oxford Times“Above it all is the pioneering vision that grips the reader. Wolmar is so passionate about his subject that one cannot help but be swept along. Certainly there was romance and great adventure, but this is also a story of danger as each section was laid across trestled bridge and wilderness.”

Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“A highly readable history of an industry that helped make America great.”

Providence Journal by Edward Achorn“Nevertheless, the book — which captures the grand sweep of the railroads' story from the beginning — is hardly a screed against government intervention in railroads. To the contrary.”

Fredericksburg, VA Freelance-Star“As a concise history of American railroads…it’s an interesting trip.”

Editorial Reviews

The Great Railroad Revolution succeeds in showing how, ‘without the railroads, the United States would not have become the United States.’”—Wall Street Journal

“Christian Wolmar is in love with railways. He writes constantly and passionately about them. He is their wisest, most detailed historian and a constant prophet of their rebirth. So America, from 1830 on, from a few, tentative miles of track to a quarter of a million miles only 80 years later, is a story that grips his imagination… the tangle of failure, frailty and faint-heartedness he unpicks here goes far beyond mere romance: it resonates and crosses borders of national experience; it tells us something vital about the nature of railways we still struggle to learn to this day… If you love the hum of the wheels and of history, then Christian Wolmar is your man.”—Guardian

“In his new book, his ninth, a comprehensive, compulsive and compelling epic story of the American railroad, Christian Wolmar reveals how that revolution actually fuelled the nation’s rise to a world-status power with its new found ability to glue itself together into a cohesive economic force…. Wolmar’s magnificent saga tells graphically how it all happened, then collapsed as man’s love affair with trains transferred first to cars, then to airplanes and possibly next lock on to rockets into space….What is outstanding in his fascinating research is the detail, an encyclopedia of railway lore, myth and anecdote that could – and has – sustained many a film, TV series and novel.”—Camden New Journal (UK)

“In a volume that will delight train buffs—and hopefully others—English historian and railway expert Wolmar… examines the rise and fall of railroads in America, with a detailed look at how they influenced and directed the growth of the country for more than a century. …The end result is a fascinating, even indispensable look at one of America’s essential historical components."—Publishers Weekly

“This is the ninth book that Wolmar has written about trains of various kinds.  It is certainly among the best, incorporating, alongside some gripping and downright bizarre reports upon a century-long stretch of vastly improved transport and soaring economic growth… an account of the ‘sheer, almost unbelievable scale of corruption and graft’ from which brutal opportunists like Huntington, Stanford and Gould minted their undeserved millions... Enjoyably anecdotal.”—Daily Telegraph (UK)

"A passionate and masterly history." 

—Sunday Times (UK)

“Readers… get to take a broad voyage through railroad vs. railroad battles (even including espionage), the Civil War (in which trains were crucial), and the ultimate decline of trains.”—Christian Science Monitor

“As he did for global railroad history in his Blood, Iron, and Gold, Wolmar masterfully condenses the history of American rail into a lively and lucid work that is highly recommended to all.”—Library Journal (Starred review)

"Wolmar clearly wishes the railroads had remained more of a social, economic and transportation force in the United States. His fine book will likely make many feel the same way.”—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Wolmar’s sweeping history of railroads in America is rich in drama…. He makes a good case that the rail system helped create not only America’s economy but its character.”—New Yorker

“Above it all is the pioneering vision that grips the reader. Wolmar is so passionate about his subject that one cannot help but be swept along. Certainly there was romance and great adventure, but this is also a story of danger as each section was laid across trestled bridge and wilderness.”—Oxford Times

“Wolmar, it seems, has no purpose other than crafting a critical but admiring study of a triumph of engineering, and in this he has succeeded. A solid and, yes, concise look at the railroad’s past, with a rousing call at the end for a new and improved rail system to carry the nation forward.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Wolmar is clearly in love with his subject—it’s easy to imagine him as a sort of walking encyclopedia of railroad lore—and his enthusiasm for his material shines through on every page. He finds the decline and increasing irrelevance of the railroad—especially the passenger rails—a deeply saddening aspect of contemporary life, and he makes a convincing case that, in losing rail travel as a fundamental human experience, we’ve lost a hugely important part of ourselves and our history.”—Booklist

“Without the railroads, Wolmar contends, there would have been no United States.… The really interesting suggestion is that robber barons are a necessary evil, the drivers stoking the engine of American capitalism.”—Australian Financial Review

From the Publisher

Popular historian Wolmar (Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways, 2010) charts the sometimes haphazard, sometimes avaricious, sometimes puzzling history of America's railroads. "I realize that it is somewhat cheeky of me, a Brit, to try to write a concise history of American railroads," he writes early on. Cheeky, perhaps, but as he also writes, an outsider's perspective on what has been seen as a consummately American adventure can be helpful--particularly since world history isn't without comparable ventures, such as the building of railroads across Siberia and Africa. Yet, as Wolmar rightly notes, the railroads played a key role in uniting the United States, even if one of the signal moments of railroad history wasn't quite all it was cracked up to be. That is, the building of the transcontinental line, as commemorated by the driving of a golden spike in Utah in 1869, was a symbolic gesture of sorts; it wasn't until a bridge was built over the Missouri River three years later that a person could truly travel across the continent without leaving the rails. Further, "there never has been a single railroad company stretching from East Coast to West." All of this does nothing to diminish the accomplishment of introducing the new technology of the railroad and extending it over thousands of miles in the space of just three decades, work carried out by millions of man-hours of hard labor but planned out and capitalized on by men whose names are bywords today, such as Carnegie, Mellon and Stanford. Wolmar acknowledges the "corruption, cheating, purloining of government funds, reckless building practices, and astonishing greed" that went into the making of the transcontinental system, but his purpose is less political than historian Richard White's sweeping condemnation of the robber barons of yore in Railroaded (2011). Wolmar, it seems, has no purpose other than crafting a critical but admiring study of a triumph of engineering, and in this he has succeeded. A solid and, yes, concise look at the railroad's past, with a rousing call at the end for a new and improved rail system to carry the nation forward.

Kirkus Reviews