The Long Island Rail Road is the oldest railroad in the country still operating under its original name. It is the busiest railroad in North America, with 90 million annual riders on 735 trains covering 11 different branches. The Babylon Branch, which serves 15 stations from Valley Stream to Babylon, carries 18 million annual riders over its 20-mile right-of-way. The branch has been totally electrified since 1925 and has not had any street crossings at grade since 1979. There are three sig...

David D. Morrison, retired Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) branch line manager and railroad historian, has compiled rare photographs to showcase the shops that power the LIRR, the busiest railroad in North America. The LIRR provides passenger rail service from Midtown Manhattan to to the far ends of Long Island at Greenport and Montauk. A vast operation such as this requires a huge fleet of locomotives and cars. The reliability of the fleet rests mainly upon the shop maintenance facility. The...

Opened in 1913, Grand Central Terminal is a world-famous landmark building with a magnificent 48-foot-high, 1,500-ton statuary group on top of the main facade. Designed by sculptor Jules-Felix Coutan, a 13-foot-wide Tiffany clock serves as the centerpiece. The figure above the clock is Mercury, with Hercules to the left and Minerva to the right. In the late 1990s, a historic restoration was performed on the terminal after which two cast-iron eagle statues were placed over entrances at Lexi...

Sunnyside Yard was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad as part of its massive New York Extension, the centerpiece of which was Pennsylvania Station in the heart of Manhattan. Opened in 1910, it is still the world's largest railroad passenger car storage yard. At the height of its operation in the 1930s, there were 79 tracks, with a capacity for 1,100 cars. Hell Gate Bridge was a joint venture of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New Haven Railroad to construct a direct rail route for trains...

The Long Island Rail Road is the oldest railroad in the country still operating under its original name. As the busiest railroad in North America, it carries 265,000 customers each weekday aboard 735 trains on 11 different branches. The Port Jefferson Branch serves 10 stations from Hicksville to Port Jefferson and carries nearly 20 percent of the railroad�s passenger traffic over its 32 miles of track. Hicksville Station is the site of the October 8, 1955, �End of Steam Ceremony,� when ste...

Chartered in 1834 to provide a route between New York City and Boston, the Long Island Rail Road ran from the Brooklyn waterfront through the center of Long Island to Greenport. The railroad served the agricultural market on Long Island until branches and competing lines eventually developed on the north and south shores of the island and several hundred passenger stations were built. After Penn Station was opened in 1910, the number of passengers commuting between Manhattan and Long Islan...

In 2013 it is possible that Israel, backed by the United States, will launch an attack on Iran. This would be a catastrophic event, risking war, bloodshed and global economic collapse. In this passionate, but rationally argued essay, the authors attempt to avert a potential global catastrophe by showing that the grounds for war do not exist, that there is no evidence of an ongoing Iranian nuclear weapons programme, and that Iran would happily come to a table and strike a deal. They argue t...

"I don't fear death . . . but they do."Muriel McAuley has lived in the Scottish fishing village of Witchaven all her life. She was born there, and she intends to die there.But when an overseas property developer threatens to evict the residents from their homes and raze Witchaven to the ground in the name of progress, all seems lost . . . until the day a mysterious fog bank creeps inland.THE HAARTo some it brings redemption . . . to others, it brings only ma...

The book that answers the most fundamental question in business: Where Will I Make a Profit Tomorrow?Why do some companies create sustained, superior profits year after year? Why are they always far ahead of their competitors in discovering the ever-changing profit zones of their industry? Why do others languish as their traditional way of doing business turns into a no-profit zone? The Profit Zone provides the answers. It is a brilliant, original, and practical ex...

Despite the increasing number and variety of older characters appearing in film, television, comics, and other popular culture, much of the understanding of these figures has been limited to outdated stereotypes of aging. These include depictions of frailty, resistance to modern life, and mortality. More importantly, these stereotypes influence the daily lives of aging adults, as well as how younger generations perceive and interact with older individuals. In light of our graying populatio...

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilitiesVisible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study. Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of ...

The small Scottish town of Auchenmullan is dead, and has been for years. It sits in the shadow of a mountain, forgotten and atrophying in the perpetual gloom.Forty-seven residents are all that remain.There's nothing to do there, nothing to see, except for a solitary grave near the top of the mountain.MAGGIE WALL BURIED HERE AS A WITCH reads the faded inscription.But sometimes the dead don't stay buried. Especially when they have unfinished business.C...