The West the Railroads Made recounts the stories of visionaries such as Henry Harmon Spalding, Samuel Parker, and Asa Whitney, who imagined the railroad as a new Northwest Passage, an iron road through the West to the Orient. As the idea of a Pacific Railroad grew in the 1840s and 1850s, many Americans imagined the West as a fertile garden or a treasure chest of priceless minerals. Railroads could deliver the riches of that West into the hands and pockets of the modern world. These two compelling ideas - the railroad and the West- came together to create an irresistible dream. Filled with contemporary accounts, illustrations, and photographs, The West the Railroads Made offers a fresh look at what the iron road created.

Acclaimed travel writer Anthony Lambert presents his selection of train journeys with real character, sublime scenery, a sense of history, a well-appointed train, or even the opportunity to enjoy a meal with proper napery, silver and glass... Some journeys are well known, such as the Glacier or Orient Expresses, which combine glamour, outstanding cuisine and service and colorful history. Others less so: The Sunset Limited traverses through the quintessential Wild West country of New Mexico; or the coast-to-coast journey through the chestnut- and pine-clad mountains of Corsica, crossing one of Gustave Eiffel’s glorious viaducts of gossamer steel. From the modest line of the Alaska Railroad to the Trans-Siberian; from a narrow-gauge web of lines in the Harz Mountains to the train that crosses Australia’s barren Nullarbor Plain in a dead-straight 478km, Lambert’s is an unmissable selection for any lover of travel that is as delightful as the destination.

An epic and revelatory narrative of the most important transportation technology of the modern world In his wide-ranging and entertaining new book, Tom Zoellner?coauthor of the New York Times?bestselling An Ordinary Man?travels the globe to tell the story of the sociological and economic impact of the railway technology that transformed the world?and could very well change it again. From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the Japanese-style bullet trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of this most indispensable form of travel. A masterful narrative history, Train also explores the sleek elegance of railroads and their hypnotizing rhythms, and explains how locomotives became living symbols of sex, death, power, and romance.

In the 1860s, land speculators in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory expected that a great city would rise where the railroad crossed the Red River of the North. In 1872, after the Northern Pacific Railroad laid its first tracks across the river, it brought settlers, capital, and access to Eastern markets and gave birth to the twin cities of Moorhead and Fargo. Historian Carroll Engelhardt’s Gateway to the Northern Plains chronicles the story of Fargo and Moorhead’s birth and growth. Once just specks on the vast landscape of the Northern Plains, these twin cities prospered, teeming with their own dynamic culture, economy, and politics. Moorhead was the first, boosted by railroad manager Thomas Hawley Canfield, who touted it as superior to Fargo. Amid disputes and deals with entrepreneurs, the railroad company provided land for public schools and churches to speed the refinement of the settlement. Despite Moorhead’s earlier start, Northern Pacific Railway chose Fargo as its headquarters, and it became the “Gateway City” to North Dakota. Development in the cities was not always harmonious. As the population increased, so did the pressure to conform to middle-class values. Residents joined together to create community churches and schools, clashing with migratory harvest workers, usually single men, who patronized saloons, brothels, and gambling dens. Outraged citizens worked to eliminate such antisocial behavior and establish moral order. Though the dominant Twin Cities to the south limited Fargo and Moorhead’s size and success, settlers from far and wide poured in, creating a diverse population and vital culture. There are many histories of major U.S. cities, but in Gateway to the Northern Plains Engelhardt reveals how the small cities of the plains have made their mark on the country as well as on the reality—and the myth—of the American West. Carroll Engelhardt is professor emeritus of history at Concordia College, Moorhead. He is the author of On Firm Foundation Grounded: The First Century of Concordia College (1891–1991).

Featuring archival photographs, a vivid re-creation of the heyday of American expansion brings the transcontinental railroads to life, including all of the heroes and villains, laborers and presidents, engineers, bankers, and politicians who contributed to the drama. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

How two of America's greatest authors took on the Central Railroad monopoly The notorious Central Pacific Railroad riveted the attention of two great American writers: Ambrose Bierce and Frank Norris. In The Great American Railroad War, Dennis Drabelle tells a classic story of corporate greed vs. the power of the pen. The Central Pacific Railroad accepted US Government loans; but, when the loans fell due, the last surviving founder of the railroad avoided repayment. Bierce, at the behest of his boss William Randolph Hearst, swung into action writing over sixty stinging articles that became a signal achievement in American journalism. Later, Norris focused the first volume of his trilogy, The Octopus, on the freight cars of a thinly disguised version of the Central Pacific. The Great American Railroad War is a lively chapter of US history pitting two of America's greatest writers against one of A merica's most powerful corporations.

A detailed chronicle of one of America's worst rail disasters describes how, in 1910, two trainloads of people, trapped in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State by a fierce February blizzard, were swept into a mountain ravine by the nation's deadliest avalanche.