Transportation

The history of the Delmarva Peninsula is inextricably entwined with the story of its railroads. The earliest railroads were short, locally funded lines. The dream to connect Norfolk directly to Eastern Seaboard cities farther north was first realized by the New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk Railroad in the 1880s. The line ran north-south along the peninsula to Cape Charles City, Virginia, where freight cars were loaded onto barges for the trip across the Chesapeake Bay. This line was eventually absorbed by the giant Pennsylvania Railroad, and the ferry service was eclipsed when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was completed in 1964. For more than a century, though, railroads played a critical role in the development of the Eastern Shore. Regional historian Lorett Treese tells this story.

At the turn of the twentieth century, railroads meant progress, growth and development.

In the 1890s Southport, North Carolina became the target destination for a major coaling terminal for ships sailing the Atlantic coast. A new terminal would require a railroad to bring in coal and other supplies. More than twenty companies were formed to pursue this idea over the years, with a few actual accomplishments, but most were purely speculative. Wearying the expectant town for more than twenty-five years, the vision for a great port was whittled down until local entrepreneurs finally built a 30-mile rail line to connect the town to Wilmington.

Local author and railroad historian Mark Koenig chronicles the short life of a short line and the long process of making it a reality.

Experience the thriving industry and commerce of Richmond during the Gilded Age. The Richmond Locomotive Works was born out of the ashes of the evacuation fires at the end of the Civil War. The company grew, despite numerous financial and personnel difficulties, to become one of the city's single-largest employers, an industrial behemoth that provided livelihoods to thousands upon thousands of men over the course of its existence. Over a span of sixty years, the facility produced a myriad of industrial products, including thousands of steam locomotives that traversed rails throughout the United States and across the world. Historian Nathan Vernon Madison provides, for the first time since its closure in 1927, a thorough and complete history of this Richmond institution.

Railroads are central in the history of Georgia. Explore 200 years of railroad expansion and consolidation in this must-read for railroad and Georgia history fans.

Before the start of the Civil War, Georgia had ten railroads, five of which figured significantly in General William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea.

The number of rail lines in the state ballooned after the war. Many were founded by individual entrepreneurs like Henry Plant and Thomas Clyde, while the biggest railroad of them all (Southern Railway) was created out of whole cloth by New York financier J.P. Morgan. At the close of the nineteenth century, consolidation was already in process, and by the end of the next century, only three significant railroads remained in Georgia.

Author and historian Robert C. Jones examines Georgia's rail history over the past two centuries and today.

Told through the eyes of three Irish immigrant families who helped build it, discover the groundbreaking story of the construction of the Blue Ridge Tunnel.

In one of the greatest engineering feats of his time, Claudius Crozet led the completion of Virginia's Blue Ridge Tunnel in 1858. Two centuries later, the National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark still proudly stands, but the stories and lives of those who built it are the true lasting triumph. Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Hunger poured into America resolute for something to call their own. They would persevere through life in overcrowded shanties and years of blasting through rock to see the tunnel to completion. Prolific author Mary E. Lyons follows three Irish families in their struggle to build Crozet's famed tunnel and their American dream.