A World History Of Rail

Is it possible to overestimate the impact of the railway in history? Jeremy Black analyses that impact from the beginning to today. And of course it's not all a triumph. The network of the Congo today operates on three gauges run by separate companies; and a lot of it doesn't work.

This 4-volume collection is the first compilation of primary sources to historicize the cultural impact of railways on a global scale from their inception in Great Britain to the Great Depression. Gathered together are over 200 rare out-of-print published and unpublished materials from archival and digital repositories throughout the world. Organized by historical geography, this third volume explores the railways through Eurasia.

A World History of Railway Cultures, 1830-1930 is the first collection of primary sources to historicize the cultural impact of railways on a global scale from their inception in Great Britain to the Great Depression. Its dual purpose is to promote understanding of complex historical processes leading to globalization and generate interest in transnational and global comparative research on railways. In four volumes, organized by historical geography, this scholarly collection gathers rare out-of-print published and unpublished materials from archival and digital repositories throughout the world. It adopts a capsule approach that focuses on short selections of significant primary source content instead of redundant and irrelevant materials found in online data collections. The current collection draws attention to railway cultures through railroad reports, parliamentary papers, government documents, police reports, public health records, engineering reports, technical papers, medical surveys, memoirs, diaries, travel narratives, ethnographies, newspaper articles, editorials, pamphlets, broadsides, paintings, cartoons, engravings, photographs, art, ephemera, and passages from novels and poetry collections that shed light on the cultural history of railways. The editor’s original essays and headnotes on the cultural politics of railways introduce over 200 carefully selected primary sources. Students and researchers come to understand railways not as applied technological impositions of industrial capitalism but powerful, fluid, and idiosyncratic historical constructs.

Although the origins of the train concept are to be found in the Middle Ages, and the use of steam power for locomotives emerged in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, the train really came of age in the Victorian era of the 19th century. At this time there was an explosion of technical ideas, and this combined with greater national wealth and a rapidly changing social and economic climate to spur a railway boom. Railroad lines spread over every part of the world where there was a social and economic advantage to be gained, and there was an extraordinarily rapid development in the speed and capacity of trains operating on these lines.

This 4-volume collection is the first compilation of primary sources to historicize the cultural impact of railways on a global scale from their inception in Great Britain to the Great Depression. Gathered together are over 200 rare out-of-print published and unpublished materials from archival and digital repositories throughout the world. Organized by historical geography, volume 4 considers the Americas

This 4-volume collection is the first compilation of primary sources to historicize the cultural impact of railways on a global scale from their inception in Great Britain to the Great Depression. Gathered together are over 200 rare out-of-print published and unpublished materials from archival and digital repositories throughout the world. Organized by historical geography, this first volume covers the United Kingdom.

Covering the history and development of the world's rail transport, this text covers the early pioneers, locomotives, passenger trains, freight by rail, famous trains of the 20th century, rapid transit systems and the decline of steam, and high-speed trains.