Author: Elisabeth Köll
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674368177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present. China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion. The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past forty years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the PRC’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 1010
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Book Description
Author: William G. Thomas
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300171684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 455
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Book Description
How railroads both united and divided us: “Integrates military and social history…a must-read for students, scholars and enthusiasts alike.”—Civil War Monitor Beginning with Frederick Douglass’s escape from slavery in 1838 on the railroad, and ending with the driving of the golden spike to link the transcontinental railroad in 1869, this book charts a critical period of American expansion and national formation, one largely dominated by the dynamic growth of railroads and telegraphs. William G. Thomas brings new evidence to bear on railroads, the Confederate South, slavery, and the Civil War era, based on groundbreaking research in digitized sources never available before. The Iron Way revises our ideas about the emergence of modern America and the role of the railroads in shaping the sectional conflict. Both the North and the South invested in railroads to serve their larger purposes, Thomas contends. Though railroads are often cited as a major factor in the Union’s victory, he shows that they were also essential to the formation of “the South” as a unified region. He discusses the many—and sometimes unexpected—effects of railroad expansion, and proposes that America’s great railroads became an important symbolic touchstone for the nation’s vision of itself. “In this provocative and deeply researched book, William G. Thomas follows the railroad into virtually every aspect of Civil War history, showing how it influenced everything from slavery’s antebellum expansion to emancipation and segregation—from guerrilla warfare to grand strategy. At every step, Thomas challenges old assumptions and finds new connections on this much-traveled historical landscape."—T.J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
Author: Tom Zoellner
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698151399
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
An epic and revelatory narrative of the most important transportation technology of the modern world In his wide-ranging and entertaining new book, Tom Zoellner—coauthor of the New York Times–bestselling An Ordinary Man—travels the globe to tell the story of the sociological and economic impact of the railway technology that transformed the world—and could very well change it again. From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the Japanese-style bullet trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of this most indispensable form of travel. A masterful narrative history, Train also explores the sleek elegance of railroads and their hypnotizing rhythms, and explains how locomotives became living symbols of sex, death, power, and romance.
Author: Michael Hiltzik
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 054477034X
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 453
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Book Description
From Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Hiltzik, the epic tale of the clash for supremacy between America’s railroad titans In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the transcontinental railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. Once a hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, America’s railways soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by a pageant of speculators, crooks, and visionaries. The vicious competition between empire builders such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and E. H. Harriman sparked stock market frenzies, panics, and crashes; provoked strikes that upended the relationship between management and labor; transformed the nation’s geography; and culminated in a ferocious two-man battle that shook the nation’s financial markets to their foundations and produced dramatic, lasting changes in the interplay of business and government. Spanning four decades and featuring some of the most iconic figures of the Gilded Age, Iron Empires reveals how the robber barons drove the country into the twentieth century—and almost sent it off the rails.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 612
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Book Description
Author: Rudolph Daniels
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253214119
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Trains Across the Continent North American Railroad History Second Edition Rudolph Daniels A wonderfully readable, illustrated guide to the history of railroads in America. "Trains Across the Continent is everything you need to know about railroad history—both educational and enjoyable reading." —Dean Bruce, President, Railroad Education Training Association "Trains Across the Continent should be in every public school library in the country. Quickly and concisely Dr. Daniels leads you through the maze of building, merging, and a myriad of other details necessary to understand modern railroading. Steam, diesel, passenger, and freight are all carefully explained on a national scale rather than railroad specific, making this book even more of a useful tool for the student." —Donald D. Snoddy, Historian, Union Pacific Railroad "Trains Across the Continent" is a truly comprehensive account of how railroads helped shape, and are continuing to shape, the history of North America." —Jonathan B. Hanna, Historian, Canadian Pacific Railway "Nothing but positive comments about it from faculty and students alike. . . . The industry bible in this area." —Phillip B. Cypret, Sacramento City College "Professor Daniels displays both passion and scholarship in this nicely arranged buffet of subjects both large and minute, important and interesting, serious and fun, to present a delicious overview of railroad history." —James D. Porterfield, author of Dining by Rail "Daniels manages to make brief mention of all major points of North American railroad history . . . from the workings of a steam locomotive to the dawn of the railroad mega-merger, nearly every conceivable aspect of railroading receives attention. . . . This volume is a must for those wishing to broaden or hone their knowledge of the birth and evolution of the railroad industry in North America." —Rail News Updated maps, new appendices, a greatly expanded bibliography, detailed discussions of the recent attempted mergers of the CN and BNSF, of the diesel locomotive, and of railroad electrification further round out the usefulness of Trains Across the Continent as the complete and concise introduction to North American railroads. Rudolph Daniels is Chair of the Behavioral Sciences Department at Western Iowa Tech Community College, where he teaches history and Railroad Operations Technology.
Author: Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520957903
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
The impact of constant technological change upon our perception of the world is so pervasive as to have become a commonplace of modern society. But this was not always the case; as Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out in this fascinating study, our adaptation to technological change—the development of our modern, industrialized consciousness—was very much a learned behavior. In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch examines the origins of this industrialized consciousness by exploring the reaction in the nineteenth century to the first dramatic avatar of technological change, the railroad. In a highly original and engaging fashion, Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed, and risk were altered by railway travel. As a history of the surprising ways in which technology and culture interact, this book covers a wide range of topics, including the changing perception of landscapes, the death of conversation while traveling, the problematic nature of the railway compartment, the space of glass architecture, the pathology of the railway journey, industrial fatigue and the history of shock, and the railroad and the city. Belonging to a distinguished European tradition of critical sociology best exemplified by the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, The Railway Journey is anchored in rich empirical data and full of striking insights about railway travel, the industrial revolution, and technological change. Now updated with a new preface, The Railway Journey is an invaluable resource for readers interested in nineteenth-century culture and technology and the prehistory of modern media and digitalization.
Author: John F. Unsworth
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1420082183
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
Perhaps the first book on this topic in more than 50 years, Design of Modern Steel Railway Bridges focuses not only on new steel superstructures but also outlines principles and methods that are useful for the maintenance and rehabilitation of existing steel railway bridges. It complements the recommended practices of the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-way Association (AREMA), in particular Chapter 15-Steel Structures in AREMA’s Manual for Railway Engineering (MRE). The book has been carefully designed to remain valid through many editions of the MRE. After covering the basics, the author examines the methods for analysis and design of modern steel railway bridges. He details the history of steel railway bridges in the development of transportation systems, discusses modern materials, and presents an extensive treatment of railway bridge loads and moving load analysis. He then outlines the design of steel structural members and connections in accordance with AREMA recommended practice, demonstrating the concepts with worked examples. Topics include: A history of iron and steel railway bridges Engineering properties of structural steel typically used in modern steel railway bridge design and fabrication Planning and preliminary design Loads and forces on railway superstructures Criteria for the maximum effects from moving loads and their use in developing design live loads Design of axial and flexural members Combinations of forces on steel railway superstructures Copiously illustrated with more than 300 figures and charts, the book presents a clear picture of the importance of railway bridges in the national transportation system. A practical reference and learning tool, it provides a fundamental understanding of AREMA recommended practice that enables more effective design.
Author: Aaron W. Marrs
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801891302
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
Aaron W. Marrs challenges the accepted understanding of economic and industrial growth in antebellum America with this original study of the history of the railroad in the Old South. Drawing from both familiar and overlooked sources, such as the personal diaries of Southern travelers, papers and letters from civil engineers, corporate records, and contemporary newspaper accounts, Marrs skillfully expands on the conventional business histories that have characterized scholarship in this field. He situates railroads in the fullness of antebellum life, examining how slavery, technology, labor, social convention, and the environment shaped their evolution. Far from seeing the Old South as backward and premodern, Marrs finds evidence of urban life, industry, and entrepreneurship throughout the region. But these signs of progress existed alongside efforts to preserve traditional ways of life. Railroads exemplified Southerners' pursuit of progress on their own terms: developing modern transportation while retaining a conservative social order. Railroads in the Old South demonstrates that a simple approach to the Old South fails to do justice to its complexity and contradictions. -- Dr. Owen Brown and Dr. Gale E. Gibson
