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"Do not think of the Pennsylvania Railroad as a business enterprise," Forbes magazine informed its readers in May 1936. "Think of it as a nation." At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business corporation in the world. In 1914, the PRR employed more than two hundred thousand people—more than double the number of soldiers in the United States Army. As the self-proclaimed "Standard Railroad of the World," this colossal corporate body underwrote American industrial expansion and shaped the economic, political, and social environment of the United States. In turn, the PRR was fundamentally shaped by the American landscape, adapting to geography as well as shifts in competitive economics and public policy. Albert J. Churella's masterful account, certain to become the authoritative history of the Pennsylvania Railroad, illuminates broad themes in American history, from the development of managerial practices and labor relations to the relationship between business and government to advances in technology and transportation. Churella situates exhaustive archival research on the Pennsylvania Railroad within the social, economic, and technological changes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, chronicling the epic history of the PRR intertwined with that of a developing nation. This first volume opens with the development of the Main Line of Public Works, devised by Pennsylvanians in the 1820s to compete with the Erie Canal. Though a public rather than a private enterprise, the Main Line foreshadowed the establishment of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1846. Over the next decades, as the nation weathered the Civil War, industrial expansion, and labor unrest, the PRR expanded despite competition with rival railroads and disputes with such figures as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. The dawn of the twentieth century brought a measure of stability to the railroad industry, enabling the creation of such architectural monuments as Pennsylvania Station in New York City. The volume closes at the threshold of American involvement in World War I, as the strategies that PRR executives had perfected in previous decades proved less effective at guiding the company through increasingly tumultuous economic and political waters.
The history of railroading in North America is as much a story of boardroom intrigue as it is a story of the brute force that stamped thousands of miles of train track across a rugged continent. Today’s nine U.S. and Canadian Class I railroads are the result of well over a century of convoluted bankruptcies, mergers, acquisitions, and expansions. North American Railroad Family Trees marks the first time in book form that this major aspect of railroad history has been presented in a clear, graphic format, helping the railfan make sense of the many smaller train lines that shaped North American rail as it is today. In these pages, renowned rail author Brian Solomon takes a visual and chronological approach, presenting 50 “family trees” in the style of human lineages. The story begins with the railroads of the “Golden Age” (1890–1930), continuing through the second wave of consolidations between the World Wars, the merger mania of the 1950s through the 1970s, the creation of major passenger networks, and the megamergers of the last three decades that have left railroading close to its current incarnation. Solomon even offers a selection of maps tracing the evolution of the North American rail system and diagrams proposing what-if scenarios for the industry’s future. Including chapter-by-chapter narrative overviews of key eras, along with a selection of rare photography and period advertising to lend historical context, North American Railroad Family Trees provides an unprecedented retrospective of the continent’s iconic rail network.
Relive the romance and power of the steam locomotive era, the product of a century of continuous research and development. In the United States, the final decades of steam power were characterized by very large and capable locomotives. Beginning in the 1920s with Alco's three-cylinder types and Lima's "Super Power" concept, steam locomotive design crossed new thresholds of power and efficiency. A host of new wheel arrangements combined with innovative technology and new materials to create a final generation of refinement. Lima's Berkshire of 1925 demonstrated the value of the four-wheel radial trailing truck in its ability to support a firebox large enough to supply high power and fast running. Within a few years the 2-10-4 Texas, 4-6-4 Hudson, and 4-8-4 Northern had led the way, and by the late 1920s, large modern articulated types were taking shape. The Majesty of Big Steam is full of these late-era locomotives, the last generation of steam power before the diesels took over. Dramatic photos show Berkshires, Hudsons, and Northerns at work, as well as massive articulateds at their finest. Witness New York Central's Great Steel Fleet being whisked along behind some of the most refined American-designed engines. See Southern Pacific's cab-forward oil burners crest the California Sierra, and Baltimore & Ohio's EM-1 war babies lift tonnage over the Appalachian mountains. Norfolk & Western continued to refine 4-8-4s and articulated types, even as the rest of America was buying diesels, and ran these well-oiled machines longer than any other line. Don't miss a single one!