Books for the Train Buff in Your Life

Name: Nebraska's Cowboy Rail Line
Brand: Keith Terry
SKU: 9780738560328
Price: 24.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Our 200+Images of Rail books share the fascinating history of trains from every era, line and style imaginable. Storied lines like the Southern Railway, the Illinois Central, The Baltimore and Ohio, or even the Long Island Railroad are here. So are iconic city trolleys, like San Francisco’s famous Cable Cars, or historic Chicago Trolleys. Discover the untold histories of beloved Train Stations like Union Station in Washington DC. For a train lover, these tales of rail – chock full of rare photos --celebrate the best in human innovation and inspiration through the ages.

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Nebraska's Cowboy Rail Line

$24.99

Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railway

$24.99

Middletown and Unionville Railroad

$24.99

Manchester Streetcars

$24.99

Los Angeles's Angels Flight

$24.99

Los Angeles Railway Yellow Cars

$24.99

Iowa's Last Narrow-Gauge Railroad

Greater Erie Trolleys

$24.99

Florida Railroads in the 1920's

A Short History of Florida Railroads

$24.99

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Nebraska's Cowboy Rail Line

9780738560328

$24.99

Nebraska's Cowboy Line existed for nearly 125 years and covered more than 400 miles as it made its way across the northern portion of the state. The construction of the rail line, which started in 1869, was the impetus for the establishment of many towns, and even the relocation of some, along the route. The line was employed to transport miners to the Black Hills during the gold rush of the late 1800s, it carried thousands of Irish and German immigrants to the largely unsettled area, and it allowed politicians to meet their constituents. It also was used to deliver necessities, amusements, technology, and new innovations to the state's citizenry.

Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railway

9780738559421

$24.99

A hundred years ago, high on the summit of Mount Tamalpais, stood a grand lodge with a breathtaking view. For 33 years, elegantly dressed men and women came to visit on the gritty steam trains of a famous twisting railroad known affectionately as the Crookedest Railroad in the World. They could dine, dance, and spend the night, and in the morning coast down the mountain in a gravity car. The Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railway had 281 curves in 8 1/5 miles. It had a branch into Muir Woods. It was built by business-minded conservationists in seven months in 1896 and climbed from a depot on the dirt streets of Mill Valley through a redwood forest and on to the rocky summit one-half mile above San Francisco Bay.

Middletown and Unionville Railroad

9780738573175

$24.99

The Middletown and Unionville Railroad, successor to the Middletown, Unionville and Water Gap Railroad, operated from December 1, 1913, until May 31, 1946, when it was reorganized as the Middletown and New Jersey Railway. The railroad's main revenue was derived from the transportation of dairy products, feed, coal, lumber, and passengers along its 14.5-mile right-of-way from the city of Middletown through Slate Hill, Johnson, Westtown, and Unionville in Orange County, New York. It provided a connection between the Erie Railroad in Middletown; the New York, Ontario & Western Railway in Middletown; and the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad in New Jersey. All three of these railroads had unique relationships with the M&U during its period of operation.

Manchester Streetcars

9780738504124

$24.99

There was a time when streetcars were a vital part of daily life in Manchester. From 1877 until 1940, horsecars and trolleys glided up and down the principal streets of the Queen City. Today, only a few of Manchester's residents remember those days. Now, you can enjoy a ride with them in Manchester Streetcars, an unforgettable journey over the rails of long ago. By 1892, Manchester had a fine, extensive horsecar system, which was electrified three years later. Expansion began in 1896 and through 1907, the network of tracks grew steadily, with new lines not only serving the Queen City but also radiating to Goffstown, Concord, Nashua, and Derry. More than one hundred closed and open cars provided vital local transportation during the peak years of the trolley era. These pages intimately describe the railway companies and the cars that made street travel in New Hampshire's largest city and vicinity so pleasant and so memorable for six decades.

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.

Los Angeles Railway Yellow Cars

9780738547916

$24.99

Local rail-borne transit in Los Angeles began with horsecars in 1874, evolving with cable-powered and later electric-powered passenger vehicles. "Yellow Cars" describes the principal local transit system in and around Los Angeles in the first half of the 20th century. The canary-colored local streetcars formed the inner-neighborhood lines between a vast rail network of main lines known as the "interurban" system, primarily the Pacific Electric Railway "Red Cars," which spiderwebbed throughout Los Angeles County and into Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. Rail tycoon Henry Edwards Huntington consolidated several independent lines into this great interurban empire. He sold it in 1910 to the Southern Pacific Railroad, keeping the Los Angeles Railway Yellow Cars. These evocative photographs illustrate travel during decades of change, progress, economic setbacks, war, and postwar retrenchment, when streetcar service was taken over by bus lines.

Iowa's Last Narrow-Gauge Railroad

9780738541181

$24.99

When talk began circulating in 1848 about the importance of railroads, the people of Cascade grew anxious. Without direct access to navigable rivers other than the Mississippi over 36 miles away, their community could very well fade from existence. They needed a railroad as soon as possible. The idea raced forward, with the backing of the Chicago, Clinton, Dubuque and Minnesota Railroad Company, or "the River Road," which ran along the western bank of the Mississippi River and passed through Bellevue. Their hopes and dreams became reality in a three-foot-gauge line 31 years later, in 1879. In 1880, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway purchased the River Road, which included the narrow-gauge branch line to Cascade. Overjoyed at having a larger entity involved, anticipation for the widening of the rails to standard gauge grew quickly. This book relates the story from the beginning to its abandonment in 1936. Today Bellevue and Cascade survive as thriving small towns and are economically healthy. Despite the fact that 70 years have passed since the last spike was pulled, many people know of and recall Iowa's last narrow-gauge railroad.

Hartford Trolleys

9780738536002

$24.99

By 1908 Hartford had an extensive system of streetcar lines radiating from the city in all directions. The Hartford division of the Connecticut Company totaled more than one hundred twenty-five miles of track for streetcars, the dominant mode of public transportation in central Connecticut. One could take a car to New Britain, Stafford Springs, or all the way to Springfield, Massachusetts. By the 1920s, the lighter density streetcar lines were no longer lucrative and the system was converted to a motor coach operation; by the early 1930s, the automobile had replaced the streetcar as the favored mode of transport. The advent of automobile transportation eventually led to the closing of all the Hartford streetcar lines in July 1941.

Hagerstown

9780738515076

$24.99

Hagerstown, Maryland's history is inextricably linked to the railroad. Hagerstown's nickname of the "Hub City" comes from the wheel-spoke effect that the many rail lines in and out of the city created. The first train cars from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad reached the limits of Washington County on December 3, 1834, where the line crossed into Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. The railroad was instrumental in transporting both goods and passengers and helped spell the demise of the C & O Canal. Through the years, the railroads continued to ply the tracks through the county providing work for many, and transportation of freight and passenger service from Baltimore in the east to the great expanse of the country to the west. Today, passenger service no longer runs through Hagerstown, but freight service continues and trains are far from forgotten.

Greater Erie Trolleys

9780738539386

$24.99

When the first electric trolley car entered service in Erie in 1889, it revolutionized public transportation in the region. Within a few years, Erie became a major trolley hub linking the eastern and central United States. With the exception of a 15-mile gap at Little Falls, one could travel from New York City to Chicago via Erie. Greater Erie Trolleys covers the network of trolley lines that operated between Erie, Conneaut, Buffalo, and Meadville. Greater Erie Trolleys illustrates the vital role trolley cars played in the expansion of the urban population. It documents the beginning of pleasure travel with photographs of the special trolley car excursions from Erie to Elk Park for picnics, dances, and sporting events. Ridership began to decline just as the automobile came on the scene and dirt roads became paved highways. Eventually the lines were abandoned, but the trolleys left an important mark in transportation history.

Florida Railroads in the 1920's

9780738542324

$24.99

Florida's railroads emerged in the 1830s amid Native American upheaval and territorial colonization. Many periods of development marked this fascinating heritage, but one era towers above the rest: the 1920s. It was then that Florida experienced a colossal land boom, one of the greatest migration and building stories in American history. People poured into the state as never before, real estate traded hands at breakneck speed, and the landscape added countless new homes, hotels, apartments, and commercial buildings. Florida's biggest railroads--the Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard Air Line, and Florida East Coast--were unprepared for the tidal wave of traffic. Thus, the "Big Three" had to rapidly expand and increase capacity. Dozens of projects unfolded at great cost, by one estimate over $100 million. When the building frenzy ended, the railway map of the state stood at its greatest extent--some 5,700 miles. Further, the frequency of railway service within and to the Sunshine State reached an unprecedented level, never again to be repeated.

Boston's Blue Line

9780738535760

$24.99

Boston's rapid-transit Blue Line covers a distance of 5.94 miles, a twenty-three-minute commute that begins at Bowdoin station in downtown Boston, travels under the harbor, passes Revere Beach, and stops at Wonderland. Today's commuters might be surprised to learn that the line they are riding was once operated by trolley cars and narrow-gauge steam-powered commuter trains, for it was not until 1904 that the East Boston Tunnel under the harbor was completed. By 1917, the number of people riding the Blue Line had climbed to twenty-five thousand a day. Although significant advances had been made to accommodate high-volume commuter traffic, rush-hour congestion at downtown stations remained a problem. In the 1920s, with ridership exceeding forty-two thousand people a day, the Boston Elevated Railway and the Boston Transit Commission agreed to convert the tunnel to a rapid-transit operation with a transfer station at Maverick Square. Further expansion occurred in the 1950s, when the Blue Line was extended to Orient Heights, Suffolk Downs, and Revere Beach.

Alameda by Rail

9780738547060

$24.99

Across the great bay from San Francisco, the city of Alameda evolved into an island hometown of fine Victorian and Craftsman architecture and a port containing a naval air station, shipbuilding center, and the winter home of the long-gone Alaska Packers fleet of "tall ships." But Alameda also was a busy railroad town. In 1864, a passenger railroad with a ferry connection created a commute to San Francisco. In 1869, the city became the first Bay Area terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad. Alameda became an island because a railroad allowed construction crews to dig a tidal canal, separating it from Oakland in 1902. Later generations rode steam, then electric, trains to a grand ferry pier where ornate watercraft guided them the 20 minutes to San Francisco. An auto tube, and later the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, hastened the demise of ferry, then rail, operations before World War II.

A Short History of Florida Railroads

9780738524214

$24.99

Florida's railroad heritage began in the 1830s amidst Native American upheaval and territorial colonization. Surpassing waterways as the primary mode of transport, the "Iron Horse" linked practically every town and city, carried tourists and locals, and ably conveyed the wealth of Florida's mines, factories, forests, groves, and farms. Nearly 175 years later, railroads still remain a dependable source of transport within the Sunshine State.