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R&LHS Railroad History

Railroad History is the oldest railroad journal in North America. In it you find original scholarship and fresh interpretations that set the standard in railway research. Here are articles, photographs, and art carefully selected by the journal’s editors. It offers, in its Book Division, the most complete reviews anywhere of the latest books about railroads and traction. It is issued twice yearly in an 8¼ by 10½-inch perfect-bound paperback edition.

Recent issue: No. 197 Fall/Winter 2007
(Mailing completed February 1, 2008)

Book Review Library

Index to recent issues Click on image to see more about the issue If you have browsed here before, use the Refresh Button (two circling arrows) on each page to get the laetest linkages.
Click for info	Issue	Description
	No. 197 Fall/Winter 2007	No. 197 is a Special All-Steam presentation featuring a revised version of John H. White Jr.’s 1982 book, A Short History of American Locomotive Builders in the Steam Era. The volume summarizes the histories of virtually every builder of American steam locomotives, including a compilation of production levels for most companies. The new edition includes many new photographs of steam power from the late 19th century to the end of production in the 1950s and incorporates digital renderings of rare drawings and engravings. Also new for this edition: biographical entries for 50 leading figures in the development of American steam power. This is a handsome reference edition for any serious student of steam.
	No. 196 Spring 2007	Why Cairo, Illinois, failed to become a great rail center. The golden age of highballing in the 1890s and its revival with the coming of streamliners. How Amtrak stacks up. NYC locomotive 999’s speed record is little documented. Steam’s last years in Colorado and Wyoming through the camera-eye of Richard Kindig. A McCloud River Railroad engineer takes a fond look at Baldwin’s 90-ton Mikados. A roster of 90-ton Baldwin Mikes used in North America. Coveted by E. H. Harriman and built to American standards by Imperial Japan, the South Manchuria Railway introduced modern railroading to the Orient. Engineer Joseph Santucci tells stories about his world and wins a world-wide audience on the web.
	No. 195 Autumn 2006	The evolution of Canada's passenger service 1945-2005. Six decades of roling stock used by CNR, CPR and VIA Rail. Serving the remote areas of Northern Manitoba. Update on crossing into Canada from the USA. Jimmy Rodgers was the singing brakeman. A Stroll Through Mount Clare Shops in 1872Military escorts ride the rails in Pakistan. Monuments to Railroaders in Bronze and Stone.
	No. 194 Spring 2006	Meet Georgia & Florida, the hard luck line. Passenger trains and motive power on the "God Forgotten." Profiles of forgotten RR history authors. Alco building and taking orders of their pioneer high hoods. Jack Delano's photos of men in Chicago wartime freight. The fight over Penn State's coal traffic. Western Front tasks of the railroaders in the Great War. 4-4-0 Baldwins in Finland.
	No. 193 Autumn 2005	The streetcars took a hit with the flood. Lucius Beebe pioneered the railfan book with colorful prose and pictures. Facts sometimes got in the way. The steam power that Soviet Russia gave to China started in America. A case study of technology transference. A connoisseur of steam returns to China for a last hurrah. Coal dust, Reshui, and other bittersweet adventures. How to counter the popularity of the automobile? SP&S tried coordinated bus-rail service on its Portland-Pacific Coast line. 19th-century builders take the lead in selling the image and mechanics of locomotives. Restoring the art of another age.
	No. 192 Spring 2005	For close to a century, workers on the Wabash had enviable access to on-line hospitals. A 1905 account of Southern Pacific’s hospital car. Employee associations persist in a world of for-profit medicine. Railroad publisher and writer Zerah Colburn lost everything and died in disgrace. All about the railroad that burrowed under Baltimore and proved the practicality of main-line electric traction. Pigmy electrics plied their trade on the narrow streets of East Baltimore. From shad eggs to 60-pound sharks, fish traveled in cars designed for their safety and comfort. How woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, and printers’ trains spread the image of early railways to the masses. Recovering an i mportant tranche of railroad records took organization, time, and elbow grease.
	No. 191 Autumn 2004	History of the Dome Car; Cuba and Railroads: Part 2: Fifty Years Too Soon; Aftermath of an Ohio interurbans cutting of coal rates; Railroad Soldiers: Thumbnail history of U. S. Military Railways; The Bridge that Never Was: Japan's WWII Burma-Siam railway.
	No. 190 Spring 2004	The Curve: Horseshoe Curve exerts staying power as an engineering feat and train-watching paradise; Cuba and Railroads: Part 1: Main Lines, 1837-2003; O. Winston Link; Requiem for a Runaway: In search of the remains of a Mallet that disappeared off Rollins Pass in 1924.
	No. 189 Autumn 2003	Railroads and Slavery; Defeating Division 699: The 1916 railway strike in Washington, DC; Santa Fe's Poster Genius; Loss at Kinzua: History of Kinzua Viaduct; David P. Morgan bio Part Two.
	No. 188 Spring 2003	Too Big to Fail?: The political and regulatory mindset that led to Penn Central; Forgetting St. Louis and Other Map Mischief: The oddities and deception of railroad mapmaking; David P. Morgan bio: Part 1; Overwhelmed with Good Fortune: Sir Henry Tyler vs. the Vanderbilts in a gilded age battle for Chicago.
	No. 187 Autumn 2002	Railroaders: Lives and Stories; Hitler's Locomotives: Part 2; American Variety: Comparing engine classes here and abroad; The amiable New York & Greenwood Lake.
	No. 186 Spring 2002	Rails Across the Hudson: Getting across the barrier, then and now; On the Waterfront: New York Harbor railroading in the 1950s and 1960s; Hitler's Locomotives: Part 1; German Railroaders and the Holocaust; Strategic Short Line: All about South Carolina's Columbia, Newberry & Laurens.
	No. 185 Autumn 2001	160 pages. Includes our EXCLUSIVE coverage of PATH operations during and after the terrorist attack of September 11, “Bravery at the WTC.” Plus Staggers Act deregulation, the saga of abandoned rail corridors, blue-collar “boomer” tales, Wheeling & Lake Erie locomotives, restoring the company town of Pullman, and discovering the beauty of dining-car menus.
	No. 184 Spring 2001	160 pages. Features wrecks, explosions, and pile-ups, a comprehensive history of railroad accidents and disasters, with eight articles, an exclusive list of notable accidents (1831-2000), and many photographs. Plus recently restored photographs of the Pennsylvania Railroad, steam on the Virginian Railway, and German-built diesel-hydraulic engines on the Southern Pacific.
	No. 183 Autumn 2000	160 pages. Includes "Century Gone," by Tom Taber and Mark Reutter, a superb overview of the many changes in railroading in the 20th century, embellished with period timetables and posters. In addition, "Race to Chicago" details the rivalry between the Michigan Central and Michigan Southern to get to Chicago first; "Sahara's Lost Railroads," offers an account of desert railroads that once fueled Mussolini's dreams and played a role in World War II; and "Semaphore Blades by Night" provides a missing chapter in the evolution of signaling. PLUS, the issue features the stunning night photography of Ben Halpern.
	No. 182 Spring 2000	144 pages. Features the 4-8-4 locomotive by Robert A. Le Massena, with a gallery of historic action photos. Plus “The Railroad Pass: Perk or Plunder;” “Good Night, Madison,” an award-winning remembrance of growing up with tall tales and towermen in Wisconsin; a portrait of Henry U. Mudge, unsung Rio Grande mogul; and “Vanishing Triangles” on the New Haven.
	Diesel	The Diesel Revolution A 160-page special RRH issue, published to critical acclaim in April 2000, on the conquest of the diesel locomotive (1920-1960), featuring original essays by Wallace W. Abbey, Robert Aldag, Albert J. Churella, Colin Divall, Don L. Hofsommer, Maury Klein, Jeffrey Meikle, William D. Middleton, and Mark Reutter. With trackside photographs by J. Parker Lamb and vintage EMC and Alco locomotive images. Already a collector’s item.
	No. 181 Autumn 1999	160 pages. Features a social and economic history of toy trains, from floor-running “dribblers” of the 1840s to the microprocessor locomotives today. Also slavery on antebellum railroads, why the Union Pacific and Santa Fe did not electrify, and “Liquidating the Rock,” a personal account of dismantling the CRI&P.

Many issues of Railroad History, and its predecessor the R&LHS Bulletin are available for purchase from the Past Issues page. If you enjoy the information given here, consider joining the oldest railroad historical society in the United States, click on Future Issues.