The Train That Disappeared Into History

Railway expansion was the great industrial project of the late 19th century, and the Great Powers built railways at speed and reaped great commercial benefits. The greatest imperial dream of all was to connect the might of Europe to the potential riches of the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire. In 1903 Imperial Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, began to construct a railway which would connect Berlin to the Ottoman city of Baghdad, and project German power all the way to the Persian Gulf. The Ottoman Emperor, Abdul Hamid II, meanwhile, saw the railway as a means to bolster crumbling Ottoman control of Arabia. Using new Ottoman Turkish sources, Murat Ozyuksel shows how the Berlin-Baghdad railway became a symbol of both rising European power and declining Ottoman fortunes. It marks a new and important contribution to our understanding of the geopolitics of the Middle East before World War I, and will be essential reading for students of empire, Industrial History and Ottoman Studies.

Explores a decade of great change in South Shields in the 1950s.

In the 1920's, A payroll train carrying cash for thousands of coal miners disappears into thin air. The next day, Charles Lindbergh successfully crossed the Atlantic, a popular local hotel burns down, and the train is lost into history. Until now.

Soon after Giles County was formed in 1806, George Pearis offered 53 acres, lumber, and stone to build the first courthouse. The building was constructed, and Pearisburg was established in 1808 at the geographic center of the county. The original courthouse was replaced in 1836 with the current brick structure that has been recently renovated and is still in use today. Giles County's story is one of water crossings and floods, agriculture, industrial development, railroads, tourism, and distinct communities isolated by the mountains and water. Natural resources, including mountains, springs, creeks, limestone cliffs, and 37 miles of the New River in Giles County, have shaped the settlement, industry, transportation, commerce, recreation, and tourism of the area. Photographs of life in each of these small communities depict the varied history of Giles County and those who have been drawn to this place.

A History of Moonville, Ohio and a Collection of its Haunting Tales, Revised Edition, is an updated version of a previous work the author had published back in 2008. This revised edition contains more detailed history about Moonville and its surrounding towns, such as Zaleski, on how they came to be, most notably that Moonville was named by the railroad after a general store proprietor rather than the man who had actually founded the town; and that Zaleski was named after a Polish/French financier who never came to America to see his namesake town. This revised edition also contains more haunting tales of what had happened to some of those who had lived and worked in this remote mining town in eastern Vinton County, Ohio, mainly covering those who had been involved in train accidents surrounding the still-standing tunnel as these trains came barreling through the area; plus, there are a few tales of murder as well. There are also a few light-hearted tales most notably that of a well-known English author who had passed through Moonville on his way to tour America back in the late 1860s as well as a story about some feisty sisters, in Athens, who took on the expanding railroad. There are human interest elements in all of this, most notably to me, is the story of the Dexters who had been enslaved in Virginia, escaping in the 1860s, having made their way to Moonville in order to live out their lives in freedom. This book is about preserving the history of a mining town that began back in the 1850s, thriving for nearly fifty years, before it began its long slide into history, though not completely forgotten, for it had been, once, a vital part of Ohios history, especially in the days leading up to the American Civil War; and that is why I wrote and revised this work - for Moonvilles history is a part of Ohios history.