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Author: Charles Penrose
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 32
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDescription of the collection begun by John W. Barriger, railroad executive. The collection became the John W. Barriger National Railroad Library, at the St. Louis Mercantile Library, St. Louis, MO.
Author: H. Roger Grant
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2018-03-14
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 0253032903
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“Readers will find in his biography an extraordinary tale of the travails of twentieth-century railroading through the career of this one man.” —The Annals of Iowa After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John W. Barriger III (1899–1976) started his career on the Pennsylvania Railroad as a rodman, shop hand, and then assistant yardmaster. His enthusiasm, tenacity, and lifelong passion for the industry propelled him professionally, culminating in leadership roles at Monon Railroad, Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad and the Boston and Maine Railroad. His legendary capability to save railroad corporations in peril earned him the nickname “doctor of sick railroads,” and his impact was also felt far from the train tracks, as he successfully guided New Deal relief efforts for the Railroad Division of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the Depression and served in the Office of Defense Transportation during World War II. Featuring numerous personal photographs and interviews, John W. Barriger III is an intimate account of a railroad magnate and his role in transforming the transportation industry. “Thanks to Roger Grant’s latest book, Barriger and his amazing legacy endures, waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers. Trust me, you’ll learn a lot.” —Classic Trains “H. Roger Grant’s biography, John W. Barriger III, offers a new and much needed perspective on this prominent individual. Grant brings together an overview of Barriger’s career developments with an appropriate balance of insights into his early life and introduction to railroads.” —Journal of Transport History
Author: H. Roger Grant
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2018-03-14
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 0253032911
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn John W. Barriger III: Railroad Legend, historian H. Roger Grant details the fascinating life and impact of a transportation tycoon and "doctor of sick railroads." After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John W. Barriger III (1899–1976) started his career on the Pennsylvania Railroad as a rodman, shop hand, and then assistant yardmaster. His enthusiasm, tenacity, and lifelong passion for the industry propelled him professionally, culminating in leadership roles at Monon Railroad, Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad and the Boston and Maine Railroad. His legendary capability to save railroad corporations in peril earned him the nickname "doctor of sick railroads," and his impact was also felt far from the train tracks, as he successfully guided New Deal relief efforts for the Railroad Division of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the Depression and served in the Office of Defense Transportation during World War II. Featuring numerous personal photographs and interviews, John W. Barriger III is an intimate account of a railroad magnate and his role in transforming the transportation industry.
Author: Gregory L. Schneider
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2020-02-05
Total Pages: 400
ISBN-13: 0700629629
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCelebrated in history and song, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company—the Rock Island Line—was a powerful Midwestern railroad that once traversed thirteen states with its fast freights and Rocket passenger trains but eventually succumbed to government regulation and a changing economy. Gregory Schneider chronicles the Rock Island’s painful decline and along the way reveals some of the key problems within the American railroad industry during the post–World War II era. Schneider takes readers back to a time when railroads still clung to a storied past to offer new insight into the devastating impact of economic policymaking during the 1960s and 1970s. Schneider recounts the largest railroad liquidation in American history—as well as one of the most successful reorganizations in American business—to depict the demise and ultimate collapse of Rock Island as part of a broader account of hard times in the railroad industry beginning in the 1970s. Schneider weaves a complex story of how business, politics, government bureaucracy, and individual greed helped to limit the economic possibilities of the railroad industry and catapult the Rock Island Railroad into oblivion. Weakened by a troubled economy, the Rock fell victim to inept management and labor union intransigence; but Schneider also reveals how government regulations and price controls prevented innovation, hindered capital acquisition, and favored other forms of transportation that lie beyond the scope of regulation. Railroads were even hurt by taxation of property and real estate while competitors were able to use government-subsidized highways and airports without having to pay taxes to fund them. Now that America has gone on to witness the collapse of such mammoth firms as Enron and Lehman Brothers, not to mention the bankruptcy and bailout of General Motors, the story of the Rock provides an instructive lesson in how a major American enterprise was allowed to fall victim to forces often beyond its control—while the bailout of the Penn Central, at the expense of smaller lines like Rock Island, helped initiate the era of “too big to fail.” For economic historians and railroad buffs alike, Rock Island Requiem is a well-researche
Author: Robert E. Mohowski
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2003-09-16
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780801872228
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad arose in 1881 through the merger of several smaller railway companies that linked the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania to the industrial centers of the New York–New Jersey metropolitan area. Immediately successful in the coal business, the NYS&W also attracted tourists by promoting the beauty and rural charm of the Delaware Water Gap and building picnic facilities for same-day excursions from both ends of the line. The company's fortunes rose through the 1920s, fell in the 1930s, surged in the 1940s as it became one of the region's busiest and most innovative passenger lines, and slowly declined from the 1950s until finally passing into bankruptcy in 1976 and reorganization into a regional freight hauler. As expertly and engagingly told in this heavily illustrated book—the first in-depth history of the line—the story of the NYS&W vividly illustrates the challenges faced by the many smaller railroad companies that contributed to America's industrial growth and the inventive solutions their directors devised to surmount these difficulties in the service of local and regional needs. Robert E. Mohowski traces the company's tangled history from the founding of its direct ancestor—the New Jersey, Hudson, and Delaware Railroad—in 1832 through its acquisition by the Erie Railroad in 1898, its reemergence as an independent entity in 1940, and its thirty-six-year-long struggle to keep the railroad in business. As Mohowski accounts, the NYS&W throughout its history aggressively sought out new sources of revenue, particularly as the traffic in coal dwindled. Commuter service became the most successful of these activities, and the line's management invested heavily in upgrading its locomotive and passenger car fleets. The company introduced streamlined, self-propelled cars that provided fast, comfortable travel in northeast New Jersey (a prototype for New Jersey Transit's present-day Midtown Direct service). These efforts, however, proved insufficient to prevent the company's demise. Beloved by railroad enthusiasts, the New York, Susquehanna & Western serves as a case study in technological innovation and creative management and stands as an important chapter in the history of American railroads.
Author: Joe Welsh
Publisher:
Published:
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13: 9781616731151
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn authoritative, lavishly illustrated history of Union Pacific's revolutionary passenger services from 1934 to the end of the railroad's passenger operations in 1971.
Author: Lesley Barker
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2006-08-14
Total Pages: 132
ISBN-13: 1439633053
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThough the city of St. Louis is located on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, for the railroads, the St. Louis Gateway extends into Illinois, north and south along both sides of the river. Two factors conspired against St. Louiss aspiration to become the preeminent rail center of the 19th-century American Midwest: there was no bridge across the Mississippi, and Missouris loyalty to the Union during the Civil War was suspect. Chicago beat out St. Louis to attain the regions top railroad billing. Fast forward to the 1970s, when the Gateway Arch, dedicated in 1968, redefined the St. Louis riverfront and when the St. Louis Union Station closed to rail service. The 1970s was a decade of railroad debutsBurlington Northern, Illinois Central Gulf, Family Linesand a decade of railroad demisesRock Island and Frisco. It signaled the end of a century of rail domination of the American transportation scene.
Author: Albert J. Churella
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2023-11-21
Total Pages: 911
ISBN-13: 0253066360
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBy 1933, the Pennsylvania Railroad had been in existence for nearly ninety years. During this time, it had grown from a small line, struggling to build west from the state capital in Harrisburg, to the dominant transportation company in the United States. In Volume 2 of The Pennsylvania Railroad, Albert J. Churella continues his history of this giant of American transportation. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the world's largest business corporation and the nation's most important railroad. By 1917, the Pennsylvania Railroad, like the nation itself, was confronting a very different world. The war that had consumed Europe since 1914 was about to engulf the United States. Amid unprecedented demand for transportation, the federal government undertook the management of the railroads, while new labor policies and new regulatory initiatives, coupled with a postwar recession, would challenge the company like never before. Only time would tell whether the years that followed would signal a new beginning for the Pennsylvania Railroad or the beginning of the end. The Pennsylvania Railroad: The Age of Limits, 1917-1933, represents an unparalleled look at the history, the personalities, and the technologies of this iconic American company in a period that marked the shift from building an empire to exploring the limits of their power.
Author: H. Roger Grant
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2020-10-06
Total Pages: 348
ISBN-13: 0253052688
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“Grant has once again hit a home run . . . a detailed but readable history of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, a major Midwestern railroad.” —Carlos A. Schwantes, St. Louis Mercantile Library Professor Emeritus The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad’s history is one of big booms and bigger busts. When it became the first railroad to reach and then cross the Mississippi River in 1856, it emerged as a leading American railroad company. But after aggressive expansion and a subsequent change in management, the company struggled and eventually declared bankruptcy in 1915. What followed was a cycle of resurrections and bankruptcies; a grueling, ten-year, ultimately unsuccessful battle to merge with the Union Pacific; and the Rock Island’s final liquidation in 1981. But today, long after its glory days and eventual demise, the “Mighty Fine Road” has left behind a living legacy of major and feeder lines throughout the country. In his latest work, railroad historian H. Roger Grant offers an accessible, gorgeously illustrated, and comprehensive history of this iconic American railroad. “This handsome, well-illustrated book merits the attention of any reader interested in the history of Iowa. And just as important, the book reminds us of the importance of railroads to the history and vitality of American society. All aboard!” —Iowa City Press-Citizen “A Mighty Fine Road lays out the amazing, yet heartbreaking history of the railroad I loved. The historical opportunities and disappointments of the Rock Island is clearly explained in Grant’s book, with visionaries keeping the dream moving forward, yet damaged and constrained by greed and lack of vision with the next management regime.” —Dan Sabin, President, Iowa Northern Railway Company
Author: Albert J. Churella
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2023-11-21
Total Pages: 1621
ISBN-13: 0253066379
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBy 1933, the Pennsylvania Railroad had been in existence for nearly ninety years. During this time, it had grown from a small line, struggling to build west from the state capital in Harrisburg, to the dominant transportation company in the United States. In Volume 2 of The Pennsylvania Railroad, Albert J. Churella continues his history of this giant of American transportation. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the world's largest business corporation and the nation's most important railroad. By 1917, the Pennsylvania Railroad, like the nation itself, was confronting a very different world. The war that had consumed Europe since 1914 was about to engulf the United States. Amid unprecedented demand for transportation, the federal government undertook the management of the railroads, while new labor policies and new regulatory initiatives, coupled with a postwar recession, would challenge the company like never before. Only time would tell whether the years that followed would signal a new beginning for the Pennsylvania Railroad or the beginning of the end. The Pennsylvania Railroad: The Age of Limits, 1917–1933,represents an unparalleled look at the history, the personalities, and the technologies of this iconic American company in a period that marked the shift from building an empire to exploring the limits of their power.
