The United States was made by the railroads but in a very real sense was also made for the railroad thanks to its large size and economic potential.

Steam, Smoke And Power is about the rise of the railroads in the United States and how the railroads brought together distant parts of the young country, boosted economic development and were the catalyst for America’s rise to world-power status. But it’s more than a book on the railroads because it’s also a story of the men behind the railroads.

The American railroad network, promoted by robber barons such as Vanderbilt, Harriman, Hill and other visionaries, and built through herculean effort of thousands of nameless Chinese, Irish and other laborers, was bigger in every sense than any railroad operating in Europe.

The world became a little smaller when the first successful locomotives started operating in the mines in England and Wales. A revolution began across the young United States in the way that Americans lived and worked soon after the Baltimore & Ohio began operating in the 1830s as the first American railroad. Keep in mind that railroads were operating before electricity was installed in homes, gas was used for cooking and the telephone and the typewriter were invented. Trains were even moving passengers and freight before the bicycle was invented.

Steam, Smoke And Power is also about perhaps the greatest achievement for the rise of the railroad in the United States: the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad, considered by some to be one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of the 1800s.

It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to transport passengers and especially goods as efficiently through the last 150 or so years without trains. The trains revolutionized our industry, human expansion and the way we can move from one place to another.

Steam, Smoke And Power discusses why every town, regardless of its size, wanted to be connected to a railroad so that by the end of the 1800s, almost every American lived within easy distance to a railroad station.

What is it that continues to fascinate us — even captivate us — about railroads and trains?Steam, Smoke And Power tries to answer that as it examines the rise of the railroads in the United States.

**CONTENTS**

-- The Early Railroads
-- Railroads And The Canals
-- The Rise Of The Dominant Railroads
-- Early Tunnels And Bridges
-- The Transcontinental Railroad
-- The Railway Mail Service
-- Were They Robber Barons Or Railroad Barons?