The Hoosac Tunnel Route Compared with the Western Railroad

The Hoosac Tunnel Route Compared with the Western Railroad PDF Author: Alfred R. Field
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hoosac Tunnel (Mass.)
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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The Hoosac Tunnel Route Compared with the Western Railroad

The Hoosac Tunnel Route Compared with the Western Railroad PDF Author: Alfred R. Field
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hoosac Tunnel (Mass.)
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Bibliotheca Americana

Bibliotheca Americana PDF Author: Joseph Sabin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Buried Dreams

Buried Dreams PDF Author: Andrew R. Black
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807174092
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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The Hoosac railroad tunnel in the mountains of northwestern Massachusetts was a nineteenth-century engineering and construction marvel, on par with the Brooklyn Bridge, Transcontinental Railroad, and Erie Canal. The longest tunnel in the Western Hemisphere at the time (4.75 miles), it took nearly twenty-five years (1851‒1875), almost two hundred casualties, and tens of millions of dollars to build. Yet it failed to deliver on its grandiose promise of economic renewal for the commonwealth, and thus is little known today. Andrew R. Black’s Buried Dreams refreshes public memory of the project, explaining how a plan of such magnitude and cost came to be in the first place, what forces sustained its completion, and the factors that inhibited its success. Black digs into the special case of Massachusetts, a state disadvantaged by nature and forced repeatedly to reinvent itself to succeed economically. The Hoosac Tunnel was just one of the state’s efforts in this cycle of decline and rejuvenation, though certainly the strangest. Black also explores the intense rivalry among Eastern Seaboard states for the spoils of western expansion in the post‒Erie Canal period. His study interweaves the lure of the West, the competition between Massachusetts and archrival New York, the railroad boom and collapse, and the shifting ground of state and national politics. The psychic makeup of Americans before and after the Civil War heavily influenced public perceptions of the tunnel; by the time it was finished, Black contends, the indomitable triumphalism that had given birth to the Hoosac had faded to skepticism and cynicism. Anticipated economic benefits never arrived, and Massachusetts eventually sold the tunnel for only a fraction of its cost to a private railroad company. Buried Dreams tells a story of America’s reckoning with the perils of impractical idealism, the limits of technology to bend nature to its will, and grand endeavors untempered by humility.

Journal of Railway Appliances and Railway Price Current

Journal of Railway Appliances and Railway Price Current PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 602

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Classed Subject Catalog

Classed Subject Catalog PDF Author: Engineering Societies Library
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Catalogs, Classified (Universal decimal)
Languages : en
Pages : 844

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The Railway World

The Railway World PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mines and mineral resources
Languages : en
Pages : 1270

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The Commercial & Financial Chronicle and Hunt's Merchants' Magazine

The Commercial & Financial Chronicle and Hunt's Merchants' Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banks and banking
Languages : en
Pages : 972

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Railway Locomotives and Cars

Railway Locomotives and Cars PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroad engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 836

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Railway Review

Railway Review PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 982

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American Railroad Journal

American Railroad Journal PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civil engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 872

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