Traces the history of the railroad during the height of its success, looks at its locomotive and rolling stock, and shares employee anecdotes.

"Do not think of the Pennsylvania Railroad as a business enterprise," Forbes magazine informed its readers in May 1936. "Think of it as a nation." At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business corporation in the world. In 1914, the PRR employed more than two hundred thousand people—more than double the number of soldiers in the United States Army. As the self-proclaimed "Standard Railroad of the World," this colossal corporate body underwrote American industrial expansion and shaped the economic, political, and social environment of the United States. In turn, the PRR was fundamentally shaped by the American landscape, adapting to geography as well as shifts in competitive economics and public policy. Albert J. Churella's masterful account, certain to become the authoritative history of the Pennsylvania Railroad, illuminates broad themes in American history, from the development of managerial practices and labor relations to the relationship between business and government to advances in technology and transportation. Churella situates exhaustive archival research on the Pennsylvania Railroad within the social, economic, and technological changes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, chronicling the epic history of the PRR intertwined with that of a developing nation. This first volume opens with the development of the Main Line of Public Works, devised by Pennsylvanians in the 1820s to compete with the Erie Canal. Though a public rather than a private enterprise, the Main Line foreshadowed the establishment of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1846. Over the next decades, as the nation weathered the Civil War, industrial expansion, and labor unrest, the PRR expanded despite competition with rival railroads and disputes with such figures as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. The dawn of the twentieth century brought a measure of stability to the railroad industry, enabling the creation of such architectural monuments as Pennsylvania Station in New York City. The volume closes at the threshold of American involvement in World War I, as the strategies that PRR executives had perfected in previous decades proved less effective at guiding the company through increasingly tumultuous economic and political waters.

Rail and train enthusiasts will treasure this indispensable guide to the Pennsylvania Railroad's late, great steam locomotives from the first half of the last century. From 1900-1957, a brilliant and dedicated engineering team brought the most powerfully efficient locomotives in the nation, and made "The Standard Railway of the World."

Kentucky claims to be the birthplace of railroading west of the Appalachian Mountains. In 1832, the Lexington & Ohio Railroad (L&O) began to build track from Lexington to Louisville. Unfortunately the L&O got no further than Frankfort on the Kentucky River when it ran out of money. Railroad construction in Kentucky would stagnate until the 1850s when four companies started to build track, three were north-south and one east-west. An amalgamation of railroads using the name Kentucky Central would push south from Covington opposite Cincinnati OH, toward Chattanooga TN, but stalled at Nicholasville due to the Civil War. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad (L&N) would build southward from Louisville for Nashville TN, and Memphis TN, reaching both cities as the Civil War started. The Mobile & Ohio Railroad (M&O) during the same period completed a railroad from Mobile AL, to Columbus KY, on the Mississippi River. The east-west track reached from Louisville eastward to a junction at Frankfort KY.

This book uses the contents of the official 1952 Pennsylvania RR passenger train consist book detailing the make-up of its east-west trains. The author supplements this data with a general introduction about PRR service of the period, and introduces each train with a description of its make-up, service, and cars used. Color photos illustrate many of the cars used in the era. B&W and Color photos show typical trains. Illustrations of menus and ads complete the book.

The History of the American Railroads takes you from the beginning to the current history of the railroads and the people that forged America as we know it today. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was one of the first pioneers in the founding of the industrial age of America and was one of the longest running railroads in history until being absorbed by the CSX Railroad. The first in the series, many people have come together to help put this book into print.