Edition Notes: Now in Paperback
Author Statement: Bill Laws
Series Name: Fifty Things That Changed the Course of History
Audience: Trade
Specs: full color throughout, further reading, website directory, index
Pages: 224
Trim Size: 6 3/4" X 9"
Language code 1: eng
Publication Date: 20241015
Fifty Railroads that Changed the Course of History
Praise for a previous title in the series:
Fifty Minerals that Changed the Course of History "Interesting, affordable and readable.... Offers the reader an opportunity to delve further into each mineral's historical significance in an accessible way." -- Booklist
Fifty Railroads that Changed the Course of History is a handsome, illustrated survey of the most important historical and contemporary railway lines around the world. Filled with unusual and unexpected stories and facts, it will captivate a wide audience, from the curious browser to researching students.
The book organizes the railroads chronologically, considering each according to its greatest impact on Social, Commercial, Political, Engineering and Military history. Maps plus more than 200 elegant drawings, photographs and paintings as well as dozens of sidebars highlight the concise, engaging text.
The 50 railroads span history, from the first in public passenger travel (Wales, 1807), to Japan's speed-record breaking "Bullet." Railroads in some locales reflect the map of colonialism (Guyana to transport sugar, India to carry cotton and arms). They moved troops (the Crimea, the American Civil War, the Boer War) and united vast lands (Canadian Pacific Railway, Trans-Siberian). They transported people to horrible places (Auschwitz Ker), saved the Railway Children, and went underground to cross the English Channel.
Fifty Railroads that Changed the Course of History features rail barons, politicians, disasters, crime, weather, geology, great artists, fraudsters and animals -- a dynamic cast of characters and a mind-spinning whirlwind of facts, trivia and conversation starters.
| Bio: | Bill Laws is a journalist and writer. He is the author of Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History, as well as numerous titles on philosophy and history. He lives in the UK, where he is conducting doctoral research in sociology at South Bank University, London. |
| Preface: | Introduction "When I closed my eyes this sensation of flying was quite delightful, and strange beyond description: yet strange as it was, I had a perfect sense of security, and not the slightest fear." Actress and writer Fanny Kemble, opening of the Liverpool to Manchester railroad, 1838 Railroads have impacted on the lives of almost everyone on the planet. Since they arrived in the early 1800s, their steely sinews have threaded their way through history, nudging and elbowing it in unexpected directions. Changing Landscapes and Passenger Travel Railroads modernized the towns they touched and caused the downfall of the ones they left behind: they carried cargo into the most inaccessible places and transformed forever the traditional ways of life there. Trains brought a distinctive cacophony to the urban scene: station bells, bursts of steam, the scream of a whistle, carriage couplings clattering in rail yards, and the ring of the wheel-tapper's hammer checking for cracked steel. The British monarch Queen Victoria was perfectly satisfied with this progress. On her first railroad journey, 18 miles (29 km) along the GWR or Great Western Railway to Buckingham Palace in 1842, she declared: "We arrived here yesterday morning, having come by the railroad from Windsor, in half an hour, free from dust and crowd and heat, and I am quite charmed with it." The Duke of Wellington, reflecting the sentiments of many of The Queen's citizens, had taken the opposite view. In 1830 he declared he saw "no reason to suppose these machines will ever force themselves into general use." While the railroads increased and multiplied, the anxieties of passengers remained much the same: Have I missed the train? Am I on the right platform? Is my luggage safe? Railroads undoubtably imposed themselves on the landscape. "There was probably more picturesqueness about the old method of traveling, for a stage coach harmonized better with the landscape than a puffing, smoking steam engine with its train of practical looking cars," wrote the regretful R. Richardson B.A. in Cassell's Family Magazine of 1875. He nevertheless acknowledged: "What we have lost in picturesqueness we have undoubtedly gained in convenience." Making Tracks Across the Globe With their speeding locomotives, luxury carriages and romantic boat trains, the railroads reached a zenith in the early twentieth century using the latest technology. Although the essential elements--train, tracks and rolling stock--were standard, idiosyncratic national characteristics were apparent from the start. The dominance of the railroad was complete, paving the way across the world with its routes and adopting country-specific structures, while two world wars battled on. By the mid-twentieth century railroads were exhausted. Polluting, inefficient, uncomfortable, monopolistic and expensive, they had run out of favor. Their demise was accompanied, and exacerbated, by the rush for the road, a development that squandered dwindling natural resources and left a bill for everyone but the polluter to pay. Then in 1964 a streamlined train slid, like a vision from the future, into Tokyo station. Within a decade high-speed railroads and rapid transit systems were racing to change history again, leaving in their wake a charm of pleasant old lines and railroad memories. As railroad engineer George Stephenson's biographer Samuel Smiles put it in 1868: "Notwithstanding all the faults and imperfections that are alleged against railroads ... we think they must nevertheless be recognized as by far the most valuable means of communication ... that has yet been given to the world." |
| TOC: | Contents
Further Reading Index Image Credits |
