Iron Horses

Colorful stories about old locomotives — from a 1769 Parisian steam carriage to the mighty locomotives that thundered across the American West in the late 1800s. 98 illustrations.

Can you ever truly atone for the sins of the past? When British detective Alton Bartleby mustered out of the Royal Navy a decade ago, he saw his family with new eyes. Saw how his father’s love of drink and his sisters’ and mother’s lavish lifestyle was quickly draining the modest fortune he’d managed to acquire. Perhaps rashly, perhaps justifiably, he had his father committed and the women exiled to America, arranging a wealthy husband for his elder sister Sarah. He spent the next ten years restoring his family name and fortune, while working as a consulting detective in London. He didn’t think of them again. Until now. Until his wife Aldora booked them a holiday in the American Southwest, to the small Arizona town he’d forgotten. To the territory of Robert Koning, a brutal thug once promised a young woman’s hand, a murderous bastard left at the altar when Sarah ran off with a Zuni mechanic, leaving a theft and a murder in their wake. Aldora had intended to force reconciliation with his sisters. Instead Alton finds himself forced to hunt down his missing sister for the man she left behind. Can he save Sarah from the monster that pursues her, or will all of the Bartlebys end up in unmarked graves in the desert?

Welcome aboard! Travel back in time to join the workers of the Union Pacific Railroad as they pounded west and those from the Central Pacific Railroad as they charged east to build the first transcontinental rail line in the United States. They were racing to meet in Utah, and it was high drama all the way. Workers had to burst through rocky outcrops while hanging in baskets and sleep in tents on top of railroad cars or in barracks buried in snow. Bouncy, short verse highlights the steps it took to finally bring the tracks together, and powerful illustrations capture the landscape and the labor.

This is a treatise on family history and is primarily about three gentlemen and a woman. They represent ancestors, from three different generations, who nobly carried their family torch and established high standards to which succeeding generations would aspire. These ancestors respectively, are two male slaves, the son of a freed slave and a daughter of the son of a freed slave. Their lives spanned three vastly different eras of American history, and each of them remarkably exhibited immense courage, patience, intelligence, insight, resourcefulness, the ability to endure, the willingness to struggle and the faith to sacrifice against all odds. Embedded in their landscapes were enormous setbacks, perils and personal tragedy, however each of them elected to move forward in a bold and ambitious manner like the iconic “Iron Horse.” At a juncture in American history when our individual futures are severely challenged, these four are featured because their stories are very illuminating, because they were, under the circumstances, heroic ancestors who withstood many of the challenges of their eras, because they possessed great character, and not because of any amount of materiality they accumulated. Their stories serve to memorialize the victims of bondage and Jim Crow and to communicate the history, culture and principles of two proud American families. There are noted ancestors of other families across this great country that deserve a similar distinction and maybe this treatise will inspire such an undertaking.

The fascinating history of turnpikes, steamboats, canals, railroads, and trolleys in Connecticut Post Roads & Iron Horses is the first book to look in detail at the turnpikes, steamboats, canals, railroads, and trolleys (street railroads) that helped define Connecticut and shape New England. Advances in transportation technology during the nineteenth century transformed the Constitution State from a rough network of colonial towns to an industrial powerhouse of the Gilded Age. From the race to build the Farmington Canal to the shift from water to rail transport, historian and transportation engineer Richard DeLuca gives us engaging stories and traces the significant themes that emerge as American innovators and financiers, lawyers and legislators, struggle to control the movement of passengers and goods in southern New England. The book contains over fifty historical images and maps, and provides an excellent point of view from which to interpret the history of New England as a whole. This is an indispensable reference book for those interested in Connecticut history and a great gift for transportation buffs of all kinds.

A transcription of Ross winans pocket notebook converning delivery of locomotives 1830-1860, cross-referenced with the rosters of the customer railroads. A copy of Winans' locomotive patents is included in chronological order, showing the development process.Technical, Economic, failure analysis of thc locomotives. Extensive references. End notes. Five pictures. covers the development process of "The Baltimore Engines"

Their love rides on a spring and a prayer... During the recent war, a soldier gave his life to save Jonathan Handleston. With the help of an advanced metal brace on his crippled hand, Jon travels from one poker tournament to the next, determined to earn enough money to pay the debt he owes to the dead soldier's family. Prosperity Ridge is supposed to be the last stop on his quest, but his brace is broken and he needs an engineer to repair the delicate mechanisms. The only one available is Samantha Weatherly, a beautiful anomaly in a world ruled by men. Sam is no fool. Jon is no different from any other gambler--except for his amazing prosthetic. Despite a demanding project to win a critical contract to develop an iron horse, she succumbs to the lure of working on the delicate mechanisms. And working with the handsome Englishman. But danger lurks on the horizon as an old enemy arrives to thwart Jon's mission of redemption, ready to take out anyone or anything that stands in his way...

Josiah Wakefield and Dan Sturgis are young civil war veterans, employed in the Territory of Nebraska by the Union Pacific Railroad to hunt down the hired gunmen who are wrecking their supply trains. As robbery is clearly not the motive, someone must be trying to slow up the railroad's westward progress. After a vicious firefight on the trackless plains, their continued pursuit takes them to the dissolute city of Omaha where, in the company of their new acquaintance, Bill Hickok, they survive an ambush by some paid assassins. Their trouble is only just beginning, and they are to face deadly city marshal, Deke Pritchett, and the perils of being on board an Iron Horse, before a momentous finale. But just whose side is Bill Hickok really on?