The Great Railroad Revolution (67 page)

33
. Gordon,
Passage to Union
, 224.

34
. Oliver Jensen,
Railroads in America
(American Heritage, 1975), 246.

35
. Middleton, Smerk, and Diehl,
Encyclopedia of North American Railroads
, 309.

36
. Gordon,
Passage to Union
, 226; Kornweibel,
Railroads in the African American Experience
, 242.

1
. Richard White,
Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America
(W. W. Norton, 2011), xxii; James A. Ward,
Railroads and the Character of America, 1820–1887
(University of Tennessee Press, 1986), 131.

2
. Sarah H. Gordon,
Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929
(Elephant Paperbacks, 1997), 8.

3
. Stewart H. Holbrook,
The Story of American Railroads
(Bonanza Books, 1947), 354.

4
. Ibid., 356.

5
. Congress did not standardize time until 1918.

6
. Ibid., 359.

7
. Gordon,
Passage to Union
, 202.

8
. Ibid., 212, 8.

9
. The records are listed in ibid., 180.

10
. Ibid., 181.

11
. Ibid., 184, 285.

12
. Ibid., 286.

13
. Oliver Jensen,
Railroads in America
(American Heritage, 1975), 246.

14
. Miami was known at the time as Fort Dallas.

15
. William D. Middleton, George M. Smerk, and Roberta L. Diehl, eds.,
Encyclopedia of North American Railroads
(Indiana University Press, 2007), 996.

16
. Estimates vary between twenty-three and twenty-six.

17
. Alfred D. Chandler Jr.,
Railroads: The Nation's First Big Business
(Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), 23.

18
. Ibid., 98.

19
. Ibid., 107.

20
. Ibid., 129.

21
. George H. Douglas,
All Aboard: The Railroad in American Life
(Paragon House, 1992), 206.

22
. Robert Sobel,
Panic on Wall Street: A History of American Financial Disasters
(Macmillan, 1968), 180.

23
. Widely cited but not properly sourced.

24
. Chandler,
Railroads
, 130.

25
. White,
Railroaded
, 440.

26
. Ibid., 441.

27
. John F. Stover,
American Railroads
(University of Chicago Press, 1961), 119.

28
. David Mountfield,
The Railway Barons
(Osprey, 1979), 133.

29
. They had to cross the isthmus by mule until the opening of the Panama Railway in 1855.

30
. Holbrook,
Story of American Railroads
, 87.

31
. Not to be confused with the Erie Gauge War, described in Chapter 3.

32
. Leslie A. White,
Modern Capitalist Culture
(Left Coast Press, 2008), 195.

33
. Douglas,
All Aboard
, 152.

34
. Mountfield,
Railway Barons
, 146.

35
. See Appendix B in Andrew Dow,
Dow's Dictionary of Railway Quotations
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 287, for the background to this quotation.

36
. Mountfield,
Railway Barons
, 179, 182; Middleton, Smerk, and Diehl,
Encyclopedia of North American Railroads
, 719.

37
. Middleton, Smerk, and Diehl,
Encyclopedia of North American Railroads
, 511; Douglas,
All Aboard
, 204.

38
. Middleton, Smerk, and Diehl,
Encyclopedia of North American Railroads
, 513.

39
. Ibid., 11.

40
. Stover,
American Railroads
, 120.

41
. Ibid., 121.

42
. Henry George, “What the Railroad Will Bring Us,”
Overland Monthly
(October 1868): 38.

43
. Richard Saunders Jr.,
Main Lines: Rebirth of the North American Railroads, 1970–2002
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 30.

44
. Stover,
American Railroads
, 129.

45
.
Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Company v. Illinois
, 118 U.S. 557 (1886).

46
. The
Chicago Inter-Ocean
, January 2, 1887, quoted in Gabriel Kolko,
Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916
(Princeton University Press, 1965), 41.

1
. John F. Stover,
American Railroads
(University of Chicago Press, 1961), 137.

2
. Albro Martin,
Enterprise Denied: Origins of the Decline of American Railroads
(Columbia University Press, 1971), 17.

3
. With the odd exception, such as the Western Pacific from Salt Lake City to Oakland, California.

4
. Albro Martin,
Railroads Triumphant
(Oxford University Press, 1992), 342; Martin,
Enterprise Denied
, 128.

5
. Martin,
Enterprise Denied
, 23.

6
. Geoffrey Freeman Allen,
Luxury Trains of the World
(Bison Books, 1979), 76.

7
. Martin,
Enterprise Denied
, 26.

8
. She was actually briefly revived in both the late 1940s and early 1960s on trains running from Hoboken.

9
. George H. Douglas,
All Aboard: The Railroad in American Life
(Paragon House, 1992), 232; Sarah H. Gordon,
Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929
(Elephant Paperbacks, 1997), 308.

10
. There are a very small number of exceptions where towns have passed ordinances preventing trains from sounding their horns in an effort to give their residents a better night's sleep.

11
. Martin,
Enterprise Denied
, 26.

12
. Ibid., 361.

13
. Douglas,
All Aboard
, 241.

14
. Ibid., 247.

15
. Ibid., 248, 249.

16
. Robert C. Post,
Urban Mass Transit
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 50, 58.

17
. Ibid., 58.

18
. George W. Hilton and John F. Due,
The Electric Urban Railways in America
(Stanford University Press, 1960), 12, 25.

19
. Post,
Urban Mass Transit
, 61; Paul Mees,
Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age
(Earthscan, 2010), 17.

20
. Hilton and Due,
Electric Urban Railways in America
, 3.

21
. Ibid., 23, 24.

22
. Ibid., 3.

23
. William D. Middleton, George M. Smerk, and Roberta L. Diehl, eds.,
Encyclopedia of North American Railroads
(Indiana University Press, 2007), 411.

24
. Martin,
Enterprise Denied
, 61.

25
. Different sources offer alternative figures, such as 258,000 in Albro Martin's
Enterprise Denied
and 259,000 in Richard Saunders Jr.'s
Merging Lines: American Railroads, 1900–1970
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).

26
. Martin,
Enterprise Denied
, 337; Saunders,
Merging Lines
, 36; Rea quoted in Douglas,
All Aboard
, 321.

27
. Martin,
Railroads Triumphant
, 355.

28
. Saunders,
Merging Lines
, 36.

1
. Parts of this chapter are based on my earlier book
Blood, Iron, and Gold
(PublicAffairs, 2010).

2
. Richard Saunders Jr.,
Merging Lines: American Railroads, 1900–1970
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), 42, 45.

3
. Ibid., 55.

4
. Geoffrey Freeman Allen,
Railways of the Twentieth Century
(Winchmore, 1983), 70.

5
. Widely quoted, including in ibid., 69.

6
. Albro Martin,
Railroads Triumphant
(Oxford University Press, 1992), 121, 120.

7
. Allen,
Railways of the Twentieth Century
, 9.

8
. George H. Douglas,
All Aboard: The Railroad in American Life
(Paragon House, 1992), 317.

9
. Martin,
Railroads Triumphant
, 359.

10
. Lawrence H. Kaufman,
Leaders Count: The Story of BNSF Railway
(BNSF Railway, 2005), 74.

11
. Technically, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created by his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, but Roosevelt greatly extended its scope and the amount of money it had at its disposal. The scheme bears an uncanny resemblance to the “quantitative easing” that has become almost routine following the banking crisis of 2008.

12
. Ibid.

13
. For the most part, these were technically diesel-electrics. In other words, the diesel combustion engine was used to run an electric motor that then powered the locomotive.

14
. Allen,
Railways of the Twentieth Century
, 76.

15
. Ibid., 76, 77.

16
. Sarah H. Gordon,
Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929
(Elephant Paperbacks, 1997), 345.

17
. Errol Lincoln Uys,
Riding the Rails
(Routledge, 2003), 11.

18
. Welsh poet and vagabond W. H. Davies, author of
The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp
and a frequent rider of the rails in the United States and Canada in the decades on the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was one such victim when he fell under a train in Ontario, crushing his foot and resulting in the loss of his leg below the knee.

19
. John F. Stover,
American Railroads
(University of Chicago Press, 1961), 225–226.

1
. George H. Douglas,
All Aboard: The Railroad in American Life
(Paragon House, 1992), 383.

2
. Quoted in Richard Saunders Jr.,
Merging Lines: American Railroads, 1900–1970
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), 77.

3
. Ibid.; Douglas,
All Aboard
, 382.

4
. Saunders,
Merging Lines
, 73.

5
. Ibid., 153, 155.

6
. A few trains powered by steam locomotives were run by the Grand Trunk Western in 1961.

7
. Geoffrey Freeman Allen,
Luxury Trains of the World
(Bison Books, 1979), 101.

8
. Saunders,
Merging Lines
, 108.

9
. Ibid.

10
. David Morgan, “Who Shot the Passenger Train?,”
Trains
(April 1959).

11
. Paul Mees,
Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age
(Earthscan, 2010), 17.

12
. In today's money, but a precise figure is difficult to arrive at, as local road improvements were at times included in the contracts.

13
. Saunders,
Merging Lines
, 107.

14
. Ibid., 102.

15
. Albro Martin,
Enterprise Denied: Origins of the Decline of American Railroads
(Columbia University Press, 1971), 367.

16
. Rush Loving Jr.,
The Men Who Loved Trains: The Story of Men Who Battled Greed to Save an Ailing Industry
(Indiana University Press, 2006), 57.

17
. The Penn Central was not the only railroad that tried to set itself up as a conglomerate—bizarrely, the Illinois Central at one time owned El Paso Mexican foods.

18
. Loving Jr.,
Men Who Loved Trains
, 68.

19
. Joseph R. Daughen and Peter Binzen,
The Wreck of the Penn Central
(Little, Brown, 1971), 339.

1
. Amtrak's official name is the National Railroad Passenger Corporation.

2
. Richard Saunders Jr.,
Main Lines: Rebirth of the North American Railroads, 1970–2002
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 59; George H. Douglas,
All Aboard: The Railroad in American Life
(Paragon House, 1992), 393.