The Market Street Railway Company thrived in an age when rails ruled San Francisco. Spanning the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the boom times of World War II, it had a long and legendary lifetime that is deeply ingrained in the city�s early identity. Gradually, however, it became challenged by the emergence of the automobile, cheaper motor coaches, and �nickel jitneys��competing cars on the same routes. The MSRy painted the fronts of its cars white to show up well in San Fran...

Overnight settlements, better known as "Hell on Wheels," sprang up as the transcontinental railroad crossed Nebraska and Wyoming. They brought opportunity not only for legitimate business but also for gamblers, land speculators, prostitutes, and thugs. Dick Kreck tells their stories along with the heroic individuals who managed, finally, to create permanent towns in the interior West.

The period from the 1890s to the mid-1950s is generally considered the "golden era" of passenger rail travel in America. It was a time of celebrated locomotives and luxurious passenger service, a time when rail technology saw its greatest advances and railroads became the nation's favored mode of transportation. These glory years come alive in American Passenger Trains and Locomotives Illustrated, 1889-1971. For this volume, author and illustrator Mark Wegman has researched original railro...

The Virginia & Truckee is the most famous short line railroad in American history. Brainchild of William Sharon and the Bank of California, the V&T hauled the silver and gold ore, the cordwood, and the mining timbers that made the 1870s �Big Bonanza� a reality. From the state capital at Carson City, V&T rails stretched 66 miles to Virginia City, Reno, and Minden, Nevada. Serving the transportation needs of the Comstock�s nearly 40,000 inhabitants, the V&T remained in operation until 1950. ...

In 1862, the Central Pacific Railroad was founded and began building eastward from Sacramento as part of the transcontinental railroad. This required a shop capable of keeping the railroad�s equipment in running order. So in 1867, in the swamps just north of town, the Sacramento shops were born. For well more than a century, this massive complex kept the Central Pacific and its corporate successor, the Southern Pacific, operating smoothly. For many decades, the shops were the largest emplo...

The true story of the construction of the historic Crozet railroad tunnel—as seen through the eyes of three Irish immigrant families who helped build it.In one of the greatest engineering feats of the time, Claudius Crozet led the completion of Virginia's Blue Ridge Tunnel in 1858. More than a century and a half later, the tunnel stands as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, but the stories and lives of those who built it are the true lasting triumph.

US Navy rail operations on Oahu began in 1908 with construction railroads used to help build the shipyard. Expansion of Pearl Harbor to include the submarine base and the naval magazine on Kuahua Island required a permanent railroad, which was begun in 1911. This construction provided industrial employment to hundreds of local men in the existing agricultural economy, and the influx of additional manpower from the mainland contributed to an increasingly skilled and diverse population. Worl...

Summit County's Narrow-Gauge Railroads tells the story of the two railroads that fought for dominance in Summit County, Colorado, during the late 1800s and early 1900s: the Denver, South Park & Pacific and the Denver & Rio Grande. The two railroads developed an intense rivalry as they sought to monopolize the county's economic potential. Altitude, heavy winter snow, and rugged mountainous terrain combined to provide a unique set of challenges to company management as well as to the crews a...

The "Capitol Corridor" is the name of the Amtrak passenger train route between California's capital, Sacramento, and San Jose, the state's first capital upon admission to the Union in 1850. The scenery between these two areas highlights vastly different land uses; examples include an industrialized shoreline covered with a forest of petroleum refineries, urban areas transitioning from industrial to residential use, and a wildlife refuge disturbed only by the passage of trains. The Capitol ...

The Sacramento Southern Railroad was born into a famous railroad family and a busy railroad town in July 1903. The mighty Southern Pacific, which controlled the new line from the outset, built south from Sacramento along the eastern bank of the Sacramento River into the delta's rich farmland area. At its zenith, the line was about 31 miles long, serving the communities of Freeport, Hood, Locke, Walnut Grove, and Isleton. Trains on what became known as the Walnut Grove Branch hauled pears, ...

The Pennsylvania Railroad's Horseshoe Curve is known worldwide as an engineering wonder. This landmark, located just west of Altoona, opened to traffic on February 15, 1854, and it enabled the Pennsylvania railroad line to climb the Allegheny Mountains and the eastern continental divide. The Horseshoe Curve's construction impacted railroad design and development for mountainous terrain everywhere, enabling access to coal and other raw materials essential for the industrial age. J. Edgar Th...

In the summer of 1854, the Brooklyn City Railroad opened four separate streetcar lines. The lines were introduced here several years before they were brought to larger cities, such as Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia, demonstrating the city�s modernization and ingenuity. From its first introduction, Brooklyn had one of the nation�s largest urban transit systems. With the advent of streetcars, the population in Brooklyn grew from about 139,000 to over 2.5 million by the time streetcars w...