The Pictorial History of Railroads

New York, New York, U.S.A.: Gallery Books, 1989. Second Printing . Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 10 1/2" x 14. 208 Pages Indexed. Green endpapers. The history of the world's railroads demonstrates in text and pictures the great changes that have taken place. Sometimes regarded as conservative and old-fashioned, the railroads over the last half-century or more have undergone a technical transformation, equaling that of highway transport. The modern railway locomotive, which this book studies in several chapters, bears little resemblance to its predecessors, and to a lesser extent the same is true of passenger and freight services, not to speak of such essentials as railway signaling and communications. The four sections of this large-format volume correspond to the four ages of the train. The first, up to about 1875, saw the steam train making a successful debut and then undergoing a series of technical transformations which elevated it from a promising invention to a universal feature of dialy life. The second period, up to world War I, was an era of expansion and perfection, with the railroads no longer struggling for recognition but neveretheless intent on impressing public opinion by providing services of unprecedented speed, convenience and luxury. This was the Golden Age of the train, when railroads were generally recognized as leaders in technological progress. The third sectionn shows how this confidence and mastery degenerated after World War I into anxiety, as competing forms of transport arrived on the scene. In the final section, the efforts of railway administrations to survive in an increasingly hostile world are described, with the lintroduction of sleek, high-sjpeed trains such as the TGV and the HST, efforts which by the 1980s, seemed to have put rail transport back on the agenda of modern times.