Name: Mattoon and Charleston Area Railroads
Brand: Craig Sanders
SKU: 9780738552286
Price: 24.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Mattoon and Charleston Area Railroads

9780738552286

$24.99

Railroads were instrumental to the development of Mattoon and Charleston, twin cities located in Coles County in east-central Illinois. The railroads enabled both cities to become regional centers for agriculture, industry, and commerce. The Illinois Central Railroad and New York Central System maintained shops, yards, and offices in Mattoon, while the Nickel Plate Road had shops, offices, and a yard in Charleston. In the early 20th century, the railroads were the major source of employment in both cities. Dozens of passenger trains stopped at the local stations. The phasing out of steam locomotives following World War II led to the closing of the shops. Railroad consolidation that began in the 1960s would lead to abandonment of routes and greatly diminish the importance of the railroads to the economies of Mattoon and Charleston.

Abolition & the Underground Railroad in Vermont

9781626190382

$21.99

Many believe that support for the abolition of slavery was universally accepted in Vermont, but it was actually a fiercely divisive issue that rocked the Green Mountain State. In the midst of turbulence and violence, though, some brave Vermonters helped fight for the freedom of their enslaved Southern brethren. Thaddeus Stevens--one of abolition's most outspoken advocates--was a Vermont native. Delia Webster, the first woman arrested for aiding a fugitive slave, was also a Vermonter. The Rokeby house in Ferrisburgh was a busy Underground Railroad station for decades. Peacham's Oliver Johnson worked closely with William Lloyd Garrison during the abolition movement. Discover the stories of these and others in Vermont who risked their own lives to help more than four thousand slaves to freedom.

Abolition & the Underground Railroad in Vermont

Hershey Transit

9780738598307

$24.99

When Milton S. Hershey broke ground to construct his new chocolate factory in 1903, many questioned the wisdom of building in the middle of a cornfield. With his factory wedged between the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad tracks and the Berks & Dauphin Turnpike, Hershey set out to create a first-rate street railway system. The Hershey Transit Company existed many years after the trolley industry declined in most areas of the United States. It was the chief mode of travel for the chocolate factory workers, vital to dairy farmers for transport of fresh milk to the factory, and essential to students of the Hershey Industrial School housed in surrounding farms. On the weekends, the transit system brought people from outlying areas into Hershey, Pennsylvania, to enjoy the theater or the famous Hershey Park for employee picnics, family outings, or special occasions. Hershey Transit documents one of the best-known and well-kept streetcar systems, started by Milton S. Hershey and operated from 1904 to 1946.

African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke

9781626195042

$21.99

Roanoke, Virginia, is one of America's great historic railroad centers. The Norfolk & Western Railway Company, now the Norfolk Southern Corporation, has been in Roanoke for over a century. Since the company has employed many of the city's African Americans, the two histories are intertwined. The lives of Roanoke's black railroad workers span the generations from Jim Crow segregation to the civil rights era to today's diverse corporate workforce. Older generations toiled through labor-intensive jobs such as janitors and track laborers, paving the way for younger African Americans to become engineers, conductors and executives. Join author Sheree Scarborough as she interviews Roanoke's African American railroad workers and chronicles stories that are a powerful testament of personal adversity, struggle and triumph on the rail.

African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke

Harvey Houses of Texas

9781626195240

$21.99

On the eve of the twentieth century, small-town Texas was still wild country lacking in the commodities and cultural centers of larger cities. This changed, however, with the arrival of the Santa Fe rail line, followed quickly by the Harvey House. Established in Kansas by English immigrant Fred Harvey, Harvey Houses could be found throughout the Southwest and adjoined local depots in sixteen Texas towns. Found in every corner of the state, Harvey Houses were not just restaurants and hotels for weary, hungry travelers but were also bustling social centers and often the only commercial outlet for the communities that developed around them. Author Rosa Walston Latimer tells the history of hospitality the "Fred Harvey way" in turn-of-the-century Texas, woven from personal stories of the famous "Harvey Girls" and other employees of Texas Harvey Houses.

New London County Trolleys

9780738535807

$24.99

Railroads were instrumental to the growth of industry in America. Streetcar systems branched off from railroad lines, extending transportation to urban and rural areas not otherwise accessible. The expansion of the trolley system in New London County also revitalized industry in the area. By the 1860s, the number of farms in Connecticut had begun to decline, and the need for reliable, reasonable transportation to towns and cities increased. The Norwich Horse Railroad, incorporated in 1864, was followed by various other trolley companies, including the Norwich Street Railway Company, the New London Horse Railroad, the New London Street Railway, and the Montville Horse Railway. Trolley transportation was finally electrified in 1889, fueling the expansion of trolley networks in Norwich and New London. The increase in trolley service allowed the textile industry to grow by expanding access to a sufficient workforce. The system also worked in reverse, enabling city dwellers to escape to the country for outings.

New Haven Streetcars

9780738512273

$24.99

The first street railway began operating in New York City in 1832. New Orleans inaugurated a street railway system in 1835, and most of the large American cities-Boston, Brooklyn, and Baltimore-were served by the end of the 1950s. In May 1861, more than a year before the nation's capital introduced this new mode of transit, the forty thousand residents of New Haven were furnished with local rail transportation.

New Haven's population more than quadrupled between 1861 and 1948, and the city became Connecticut's largest manufacturing center. Street railways made it possible to reach both residential and manufacturing areas. New Haven Streetcars illustrates the essential role played by streetcars in the transformation of the city, with images from each of the six groups of lines that served the New Haven area, including the Yale Bowl open cars, the universal dump cars, the safety cars, and the horse-drawn cars.

Parallel Communities

9781596295421

$21.99

For slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad, names like Springtown and Snow Hill promised sanctuary and salvation. Under the pressures of racial prejudice, free blacks, runaway slaves and even many Native Americans formed island communities on the periphery of South Jersey towns. While Lawnside and others continue to thrive today, "fringe communities"? like Marshalltown and Timbuctoo now exist only in memory. In this discussion of these primarily African American communities, Dennis Rizzo validates their role in the preservation of tradition, definition of extended family and creation of a social bond between diverse peoples; together they formed parallel communities based on, but independent of, the larger towns and villages familiar to us all.

Railroading around Dothan and the Wiregrass Region

9780738517193

$24.99

The Wiregrass Region of southeast Alabama, southwest Georgia, and north Florida--named for the perennial grass that covered the long-leaf pine forest floor--is a product of the railroads that arose with the New South. All kinds of railroads served all kinds of purposes in the Wiregrass. Shortlines and even temporary tracks moved timber and pine resin from forest to mill a century ago--they move raw materials and manufactured goods between ports and factories today. Longer lines created business links between Wiregrass towns and the cities of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and the world. Some of these roads lasted only a few years; others merged into complex systems connecting the Wiregrass Region with the rest of the world in a way early settlers could not even imagine.

Railroading around Dothan and the Wiregrass Region

The Clinchfield No. 1: Tennessee's Legendary Steam Engine

9781626195967

$21.99

As general manager for Erwin, Tennessee-based Clinchfield Railroad, Thomas D. Moore found an eighty-six-year-old vintage 4-6-0 ten-wheeler steam engine--the Clinchfield No. 1. Miraculously, the engine had escaped the cutter's torch when, in the mid-1950s, the railroad retired its steam fleet, shuttered passenger service and embraced the diesel era. Moore wanted the No. 1 fully restored and its long life on the rails--which had included being the first train to reach the victims of the 1889 Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood--celebrated as a goodwill ambassador for the railroad. The revived Clinchfield No. 1 led beloved excursion trains that visited seven state capitals, bringing joy to passengers from the Appalachian Mountains to Tampa, Florida. Join authors Mark A. Stevens and A.J. Alf" Peoples on the journey of the real-life little engine that could."

The Clinchfield No. 1: Tennessee's Legendary Steam Engine

McKinney Avenue Trolleys

9780738584973

$24.99

Streetcar lines grew and prospered in Dallas from 1872 until the 1920s. Automobile competition siphoned many of their riders away, but ridership soared again during World War II. After the war, the trolleys entered an era of gradual attrition, and they were abandoned by 1956. Amazingly, in 1989, the nonprofit McKinney Avenue Transit Authority (MATA) returned restored vintage trolley cars to the city in the Uptown neighborhood near downtown. MATA evolved from a tourist attraction into a true transit company and became the M-Line. Since then, the area has experienced rapid growth and is now home to midrise office buildings and upscale apartments.

Slabtown Streetcars

9781467133555

$24.99

No area of Portland, Oregon, played a more important role in street railway history than Northwest Portland and the neighborhood known as Slabtown. In 1872, the city's first streetcars passed close to Slabtown as they headed for a terminus in the North End. Slabtown was also home to the first streetcar manufacturing factory on the West Coast. In fact, until locally built streetcars began to be replaced by trolleys from large national builders in the 1910s, more than half of all rolling stock was manufactured in shops located at opposite ends of Northwest Twenty-third Avenue. All streetcars operating on the west side of the Willamette River, including those used on the seven lines that served Northwest Portland, were stored in Slabtown. When the end finally came in 1950, Slabtown residents were riding two of the last three city lines.

Los Angeles's Angels Flight

9780738558127

$24.99

From 1901 to 1969, Angels Flight was America's most famous incline railway, familiar from its many appearances on postcards and in pulp fiction and film noir. It inspired the titles of five novels, including a 1999 best seller, and three films. Angels Flight's two colorful trolleys glided up and down the side of Bunker Hill in the heart of Los Angeles, carrying 100 million passengers between a downtown business district and a Victorian aerie that gradually deteriorated into a gritty slum. When the city turned Bunker Hill into an acropolis of skyscrapers, Angels Flight was packed up like a boy's electric train set and stored away for nearly 30 years. After a restoration in the mid-1990s that led to a fatal accident, Angels Flight has reopened and is now ready to claim its next chapters in Los Angeles history.

Slave Labor on Virginia's Blue Ridge Railroad

9781467144902

$21.99

Between 1849 and 1859, Virginia raced to pierce the Blue Ridge Mountains by rail and reach the Ohio River. At least 300 enslaved people labored involuntarily toward that goal, along with 1,500 Irish immigrants. The state leased the labor of enslaved Virginians from local slaveholders, including four connected with nearby University of Virginia. Blue Ridge Tunnel and Blue Ridge Railroad historian Mary E. Lyons explored hundreds of primary documents to write the first nonfiction book about slave labor on a specific antebellum railroad. She shares hundreds of enslaved people's names, traces where they toiled along the line and describes their backbreaking--and sometimes fatal--tasks.

Slave Labor on Virginia's Blue Ridge Railroad

Johnson City

9781467129664

$24.99

Johnson City's growth was transformed through development of transportation in East Tennessee. Trails first blazed by migrating buffalo and Native Americans evolved into trails for stagecoaches, tracks for rail lines, and paved roads for automobiles. Henry Johnson realized the potential for the area and took a risk in 1854 when he bought a parcel from Abraham Jobe at the junction of the proposed East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad and the stage road to build a home, store, and depot. The community that arose around this complex was known by many names in its early days, including Blue Plum, Haynesville, and Johnson's Depot. However, on December 1, 1869, Johnson City received its first charter of incorporation from the State of Tennessee. As Johnson City approaches the 2019 sesquicentennial of the city's incorporation, this collection of postcards provides a look back at the people, places, and scenery around Johnson City.