Brazilian Railway Culture examines the cultural relationship Brazil has had with its railways since tracks were first laid by British, American and French engineers in the nineteenth century. ‘Railway’ and ‘Brazil’ are words not often found in the same sentence. Yet each year over seven hundred million passengers are carried by train in the major urban centres, and tens of thousands of visitors enjoy heritage steam rides at over a dozen restored lines and museums. Brazilian Railway Culture starts from the premise that Brazilian society and culture is not just samba, football and sex. The book takes a journey through Brazilian cultural output from 1865 to the present day, examining novels, poetry, music, art, film and television, as well as autobiographies, written histories, and museums to uncover ways in which the railway has been represented. This interdisciplinary study engages with theories of informal empire and postcolonialism, Latin American studies, cultural studies, film and television studies, literary criticism, art history and criticism, museum and heritage studies, as well as railway studies. This is a supplementary text for use by students on both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It will also be of interest to academics, researchers, and railway historians across a range of disciplines.

Since the advent of train travel, railways have compressed space and crossed national boundaries to become transnational icons, evoking hope, dread, progress, or obsolescence in different cultural domains. Spanning five continents and a diverse range of contexts, this collection offers an unprecedentedly broad survey of global representations of trains. From experimental novels to Hollywood blockbusters, the works studied here chart fascinating routes across a remarkably varied cultural landscape.

This 4-volume collection is the first compilation of primary sources to historicize the cultural impact of railways on a global scale from their inception in Great Britain to the Great Depression. Gathered together are over 200 rare out-of-print published and unpublished materials from archival and digital repositories throughout the world. Organized by historical geography, volume 4 considers the Americas