A reflection of the effects of highways--and their hugely subsidized trucks--upon railroads, and of the incompetence of the Southern Pacific. The trucks took much rail freight on the coast, the SP--partly through government rules & inertia--failed to meet the competition; many lines were closed, most of the rest were sold to small, hungry, competent firms. This is the story. It is well told in a style familiar to rail fans: lists of stations, engine rosters, control blocks. Abundant photos, a few in color. Current through the visit of the X2000 in mid-1993. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
A lavishly photographed tribute to history's railroads covers everything from steam engines to the latest diesel-powered locomotives, canvassing 160 of the photographer's most significant train images as taken in front of western landscapes, in inclement weather, from risky vantage points, and more. First serial, Classic Trains.
In 1880, ancient-growth forest still covered two-thirds of West Virginia, but by the 1920s lumbermen had denuded the entire region. Ronald Lewis explores the transformation in these mountain counties precipitated by deforestation. As the only state that lies entirely within the Appalachian region, West Virginia provides an ideal site for studying the broader social impact of deforestation in Appalachia, the South, and the eastern United States. Most of West Virginia was still dominated by a backcountry economy when the industrial transition began. In short order, however, railroads linked remote mountain settlements directly to national markets, hauling away forest products and returning with manufactured goods and modern ideas. Workers from the countryside and abroad swelled new mill towns, and merchants ventured into the mountains to fulfill the needs of the growing population. To protect their massive investments, capitalists increasingly extended control over the state's legal and political systems. Eventually, though, even ardent supporters of industrialization had reason to contemplate the consequences of unregulated exploitation. Once the timber was gone, the mills closed and the railroads pulled up their tracks, leaving behind an environmental disaster and a new class of marginalized rural poor to confront the worst depression in American history.
Two veteran railroaders begin their history with a review of the coming of railroad service to the Pacific Northwest, but quickly move into details of the construction, operation and economic impact of the former Great Northern Railway's "W-O (Wenatchee-Oroville) branch line, a line that became one of its highest revenue branches. Unlike many books on railroading, this book does not consist only of photos of trains and railroad station buildings. Instead, it is a serious study of what was required to support the movement of thousands of cars of apples, lumber, grain and minerals to market centers to the east. Readers will be impressed by the authors' focus on the strong ties the railroad company developed with the parties who had a stake in building the economy on this part of the GN's system. -- Back cover.
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year One of NPR's 10 Best Novels of 2011 From the National Book Award-winning author Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke) comes Train Dreams, an epic in miniature, and one of Johnson's most evocative works of fiction. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life. It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.
This highly illustrated book explains the business of logging railroads and provides examples of prototype operations. Photos of locomotives, equipment, and structures set the stage for modeling logging scenes and designing a logging layout.
In this exquisitely rendered memoir set on the high plains of Texas, Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell transforms into art what it is like to come of age in a particular time and place. A Strong West Wind begins in the 1950s in the wilds of the Texas Panhandle–a place of both boredom and beauty, its flat horizons broken only by oil derricks, grain elevators, and church steeples. Its story belongs to a girl who grew up surrounded by dust storms and cattle ranches and summer lightning, who took refuge from the vastness of the land and the ever-present wind by retreating into books. What she found there, from renegade women to men who lit out for the territory, turned out to offer a blueprint for her own future. Caldwell would grow up to become a writer, but first she would have to fall in love with a man who was every mother’s nightmare, live through the anguish and fire of the Vietnam years, and defy the father she adored, who had served as a master sergeant in the Second World War. A Strong West Wind is a memoir of culture and history–of fathers and daughters, of two world wars and the passionate rebellions of the sixties. But it is also about the mythology of place and the evolution of a sensibility: about how literature can shape and even anticipate a life. Caldwell possesses the extraordinary ability to illuminate the desires, stories, and lives of ordinary people. Written with humanity, urgency, and beautiful restraint, A Strong West Wind is a magical and unforgettable book, destined to become an American classic.
The newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands argues that the Gilded Age, along with Reconstruction--its conflicts, rapid and disorienting change, hopes and fears--formed the template of American modernity.
