The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society 1921-1971 First Bulletin Reissue

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Seller: antiquarian_music_and_books ✉️ (2,134) 99.6%, Location: Seattle, Washington, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 196043142709 The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society 1921-1971 First Bulletin Reissue. The first railway in Canada was constructed by British military engineers in the 1820s at the Citadel at Québec city; it used a similar cable-operated tramway to ascend the heights of Cape Diamond. Although the South started early to build railways, it concentrated on short lines linking cotton regions to oceanic or river ports, and the absence of an interconnected network was a major handicap during the Civil War (1861–1865).

The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society 1921-1971

First Bulletin, Fiftieth Year Golden Jubilee Reprint

1971, Rigid Softcover, 32 Pages, 8.5 x 6 Inches

Very Good Vintage Condition. The book is clean, covers attached, secure stapled binding, unmarked, no writing, no highlighting, no stains, no ripped pages, no edge chipping, no crease marks, no remainder marks, not ex-library. Some light surface and edge wear from age, use, storage and handling. Light scuffing to the outer spine.

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Railroad History  (initially,  The Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin) is a biannual  peer-reviewed  academic journal  published by the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society since 1921. Railroad History  consists primarily of articles about the  history of rail transport  with some essays and  book reviews. As of 2022, its editor is Dan Cupper. The RLHS is a non-profit organization founded in 1921 in the United States to promote research into and preservation of documentation and photography of railroad-related business, finance, labor, biography, and technology. The journal began publication in 1921 as  The Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin. The journal's title was changed to  Railroad History, starting with Volume 127 in 1972. Publication is typically twice yearly, although there have been several special issues, such as the Millennium Special (2000) between No. 181 and 182.  Earlier special issues published between regular numbered issues were designated with consecutive alphabetical suffixes.

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Wooden railroads, called wagonways, were built in the  United States  starting from the 1720s. Between 1762 and 1764, a  gravity railroad  (mechanized tramway) was built by  British military engineers  near the  Niagara River  waterfall's  escarpment  at the  Niagara Portage  (which the local  Senecas  called  "Crawl on All Fours."). Railroads played a large role in the development of the  United States  from the  industrial revolution  in the  Northeast  (1810–1850) to the settlement of the West (1850–1890). The American railroad mania began with the founding of the first passenger and freight line in the nation of the  Baltimore and Ohio Railroad  in 1827 and the "Laying of the First Stone" ceremonies and beginning of its long construction heading westward over the obstacles of the  Appalachian Mountains  eastern chain the following year of 1828, and flourished with continuous railway building projects for the next 45 years until the financial  Panic of 1873  followed by a major  economic depression  bankrupted many companies and temporarily stymied and ended growth. Although the South started early to build railways, it concentrated on short lines linking cotton regions to oceanic or river ports, and the absence of an interconnected network was a major handicap during the  Civil War  (1861–1865). The North and Midwest constructed networks that linked every city by 1860 before the war. State and local governments often subsidized lines, but rarely owned them. The system was largely built by 1910, but then trucks arrived to eat away the freight traffic, and automobiles (and later airplanes) to devour the passenger traffic. After 1940, the use of diesel electric locomotives made for much more efficient operations that needed fewer workers on the road and in repair shops. A series of bankruptcies and consolidations left the rail system in the hands of a few large operations by the 1980s. Almost all long-distance passenger traffic was shifted to  Amtrak  in 1971, a government-owned operation. Commuter rail service is provided near a few major cities, including  New York City,  Chicago,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore, and  Washington, D.C.. Freight railroads  continue to play an important role in the United States' economy, especially for moving imports and exports using containers, and for shipments of coal and, since 2010, of oil. 

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In the  United States  the earliest railed pavements were in or  adjacent  to Boston, where in 1807 (when it was decided to flatten the top of Beacon Hill in order to enlarge the Massachusetts statehouse) a tramway was constructed to carry gravel to the base of the hill to begin filling the Back Bay. The first railway in  Canada  was constructed by British military engineers in the 1820s at the Citadel at  Québec  city; it used a similar cable-operated tramway to ascend the heights of  Cape Diamond. But it was in 1825 on the  Granite Railroad  just south of Boston on the side of Great Blue Hill that several of the  characteristic  features of American railroading, such as the swiveling truck and the four-wheel truck, were first put into use. The earliest  locomotives  used in North America were of British design. In 1829 the  Stourbridge Lion  was the first to run on a North American railroad. But on the  Delaware and Hudson Railroad, where the Stourbridge Lion ran, as on the  Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad, the first in Canada, Stephenson locomotives proved unsuited to the crude track and quickly derailed. The British locomotive had virtually no constructive impact on North American locomotives. The only residual characteristic was the 4-foot 8.5-inch  gauge, which was often thought to be a misfortune in being too narrow. It was the brute strength of American locomotives, their great tolerance of cheap and crude track, their durability, their economy of operation, and their simplicity of maintenance that determined almost from the first years of operation that there would be a distinctively American railroad sharing little with British practice. It seems reasonable to argue that once the British had shown that railroads could be made to work the Americans reinvented them for a very different terrain, economic climate, and  demographic  level. The creation of the American railroad was a  contemporaneous  but not a derivative development. 

The American railroad came into existence because incomplete geographic knowledge caused the first British colonists to plant early entrepôts in what were later understood to be unfavourable locations. The uplands in central Massachusetts were already being abandoned for agricultural use when the railroad arrived in that region in the mid-1830s. Only when in the 1840s a railroad reached into the agricultural belt in the American Midwest could the port of Boston find a truly great hinterland. And by 1825 the  Erie Canal  had created a water connection between the Midwest and the port of  New York. Two other colonial ports mirrored the conditions in Boston. In  Maryland, the rivers did not serve the colonial port at  Baltimore. The Susquehanna just to the north and the Potomac just to the south had falls near their mouths. A port had grown up at Alexandria on the Virginia side of the Potomac; and the  Commonwealth of Pennsylvania  built a  canal  and later a railroad to keep inland trade from passing southward to Baltimore. In  South Carolina  the main port, Charleston, was, like Boston, on a short stream offering little access to the interior. These “mislocated” colonial ports were among the largest American cities, but they were  denied  the easy access to the interior that seemed essential for growth as the country spread inward. The creation of the railroad offered a solution to the access problem. Competition among the Atlantic ports meant that those with the poorest river connections to the West—Baltimore, Boston, and Charleston—became the earliest and strongest proponents of railroad promotion.

The first to take an active role was Baltimore, which in the 1820s had become the second largest American city. On July 4, 1828, Baltimore merchants began the construction of a railroad from the harbour to some point, then undetermined, on the  Ohio River. The results of adopting British practice were generally bad, forcing the engineers to design a railroad from scratch. Locomotives designed and built in Baltimore were stronger than those of Robert Stephenson. Leveling rods kept those locomotives on the relatively poor track, and a swiveling leading  truck  guided them into tight curves. On the  Camden and Amboy Railroad, another pioneering line, the engineer John  Jervis  invented the  T- cross-section rail that greatly cheapened and simplified the laying of track when  combined  with the wooden crosstie also first introduced in the United States. Simplicity and strength became the basic test for railroad components in  North America. On cars the individual trucks were given four wheels to allow heavier loads to be carried, and the outside dimensions of cars were enlarged. In western  Maryland  the engineers were faced with their steepest grades. These came to be known as the “ruling grade”—that is, the amount of  locomotive  power required for the transit of a line was determined by its steepest grade.  Robert Stephenson  had thought 1 percent was the steepest grade a locomotive could surmount. At the top of the climb over the Allegheny Front the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) engineers had to accept a 17-mile grade of about 2.2 percent, which they managed to achieve with the stronger American engines. Adopted later as the ruling grade for the Canadian Pacific and a number of other North American lines, the 2.2 percent figure has become so fixed that it now ranks second only to standard  gauge  as a characteristic of the North American railroad. The B&O was finally completed in December 1852 to Wheeling, Virginia (now in West Virginia). But by that time it was only the first of what turned out to be six trans-Appalachian railroads completed in 1851–52.

Three  Massachusetts  railroads were chartered and under construction in 1830, at first showing a strong  affinity  for British practice. The Boston and Lowell, Boston and Providence, and Boston and Worcester railroads radiated from the metropolis to towns no more than 70 km (45 miles) away. In 1835, when all were operating, Boston became the world’s first rail hub. As in Europe the pattern of having a metropolitan station for each line was established, though Boston had by the end of the century created a North Union Station and a South Station and an elevated railway to join them by  rapid transit. Boston’s main contribution to the development of railroads was made in finance rather than in  technology. The  merchants  who were interested in extending the city’s trade inland had invested actively in the 1830s, and by the 1840s they had connected all of  New England  to their port; but extending their influence farther was severely constrained by  New York  state. The New York legislature was unsympathetic to chartering a rail line projected from Boston. Boston capital’s role in American railroading came through investment in distant and detached railroads. It first gained control of the Michigan Central Railroad, then of its physical extension, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. This capital trail continued as Boston money dominated the Union Pacific; the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway; and other important western lines.

Merchants in  Charleston  launched an early railroad—the  South Carolina Railroad—which at 130 miles was by some measure the longest rail line in the world when it opened in 1833. But it was constructed very cheaply. Where it could not be laid on crossties placed directly on the flat or gently sloping surface of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, it was borne on short posts that were intended to permit surface wash to pass beneath the track. Much of this fabric later had to be improved. The object of the Charlestonians was to divert the flow of cotton from the port of Savannah, Georgia, to the older and larger  South Carolina  port. Theirs was considered mainly as a regional rail line, which began service with a single  locomotive. The hope was that the early years of operation would earn enough profit that the line might be improved on retained earnings and that success for the sponsoring port would come from increased trade at its docks and from the extension of the line to tap a wider hinterland.

The first phase of American railroad development, from 1828 until about 1850, most commonly involved connecting two relatively large cities that were fairly close neighbours.  New York City  and New Haven, Connecticut, Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., or Syracuse, New York, and Rochester, New York, were examples of this phase of eastern railroad development. By 1852 this first phase was followed by six crossings of the  Appalachian mountain  chain, which were essentially  incremental  alignments of railroads first proposed to tie neighbouring cities together, and there was a need for a new strategy of routing. What followed was an extension of railroads into the interior of the continent and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the 1850s and ’60s the  B&O  projected a line from Wheeling to Cincinnati, Ohio, and from Cincinnati to the east bank of the Mississippi opposite St. Louis, Missouri, then the greatest mercantile city in the American interior. The  Pennsylvania Railroad  reached Pittsburgh in 1852; and the company began to seek the merger of second-phase railroads in the Midwest into a line from Pittsburgh to  Fort Wayne, Indiana, and thence to  Chicago, which was  emerging  as the dominant junction of the vastly productive agricultural and industrial region of the eastern prairie states. The first railroad from the east reached Chicago in February 1852, and soon thereafter lines were pushed onward toward the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 1859 the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was completed to the middle Missouri valley; it remained the most westerly thrust of railroad during the Civil War. By the beginning of the 1850s it had already become clear that there would be considerable pressure to undertake a transcontinental railroad.

The first public proposal for such a line was made by the  New York City  merchant  Asa Whitney in 1844. At that time the  United States  did not hold outright possession of land west of the Rockies, though it exercised joint occupation of the  Oregon Country  until 1846, when under a treaty with  Britain  it gained possession of the Pacific coast between the 42nd and 49th parallels. Whitney’s  Railroad Convention proposed a line from the head of the  Great Lakes  at Duluth, Minnesota, to the Oregon Country. The  Mexican War, by adding California, Arizona, and  New Mexico  to the American  domain, complicated the matter greatly. North-South sectionalism intruded when it was appreciated that west of the Missouri any rail project would require a combination of federal and private efforts, the American practice. In the hope of resolving the regional conflict, the  Corps of Topographic Engineers  was authorized in 1854 to undertake the  Pacific Railroad  Survey, which studied almost all the potential rail routes in the West.

The survey on the 49th parallel was in the mid-1890s transformed into the  Great Northern Railway. A near neighbour, the 47th parallel survey, had in the early 1880s been followed by the  Northern Pacific Railway. The 41st parallel survey, only a partial investigation, sketched the alignment on which was to be built the first transcontinental railroad, the  Union Pacific  east of  Great Salt Lake  and the  Central Pacific  west thereof. The 35th parallel route became the  Rock Island  line from Memphis to Tucumcari, New Mexico, and westward from there the Atchison, Topeka, and  Santa Fe Railway  to Los Angeles. The southernmost route, the 32nd parallel, was to run from Shreveport, Louisiana, across Texas and then, through the  Gadsden Purchase  of 1853, to San Diego; this route became the  Southern Pacific  line from Los Angeles to  El Paso. Construction began in 1862 of the 41st parallel route, which had been selected to receive  federal  grants, but because of the outbreak of the  Civil War  relatively little was accomplished on the Union Pacific Railroad before the end of fighting in 1865. In  California, little affected by the war, construction was more rapidly advanced. By 1865 the original juncture of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific was moved eastward; the meeting took place on May 10, 1869, at  Promontory, Utah.

The opening of the Pacific railroad in 1869 demonstrated that the market for the profitable operation of such a line still lay somewhat in the future: one eastbound and one westbound train a week were adequate to meet the demands of traffic. It took almost a generation before additional rail lines to the west coast seemed justified. In 1885 the Santa Fe reached the Los Angeles  basin  and the Northern Pacific Railway reached  Puget Sound. Each western railroad now had to shape a new economic and geographic strategy. In place of the natural territory gained through monopoly the western lines tried to accomplish regional ubiquity, under which the Southern Pacific (originally the Central Pacific), the Union Pacific, or the Santa Fe attempted to have a network of rail lines that reached to the Pacific Southwest, the  Pacific Northwest, and northern California; only the Union Pacific succeeded. The American rail network was essentially complete by 1910 when the last transcontinental line, the  Western Pacific Railroad to Oakland, California, was opened.

  • Condition: Used
  • Condition: Very Good Vintage Condition. The book is clean, covers attached, secure stapled binding, unmarked, no writing, no highlighting, no stains, no ripped pages, no edge chipping, no crease marks, no remainder marks, not ex-library. Some light surface and edge wear from age, use, storage and handling. Light scuffing to the outer spine.
  • Format: Rigid Softcover
  • Year: 1971
  • Title: The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society 1921-1971
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United States

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