The North American Railroad : its origin, evolution, and geography
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The North American Railroad : its origin, evolution, and geography
(Creating the North American landscape)
Johns Hopkins University Press, c1995
Available at 35 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This work offers an account of where and why rail lines were built in various regions and at different times across the North American continent. It tells why the United States and Canada developed distinctive forms of rail technology surprisingly different from those of Britain, where railroading originated, and explains how these developments convey with particular clarity the continent's unique historical geography. The author takes issue with the commonly held belief that a single rail technology spread from Britain to the rest of the world. Instead, he argues, two distinct traditions of railroad building and utilization developed simultaneously - beginning in Britain around 1825 and in the United States around 1830. One defining difference, Vance explains, was that the construction of rail lines in North America was contingent on a potential market rather than an existing one. But an even greater factor was geography. Because of the great length of lines and the considerable physical barriers to rail development, North American rail companies developed powerful locomotives instead of building the costly engineering works customary in England.
Few American lines had extensive tunnels or bridges because the railroads followed the terrain as closely as possible. The North American system, Vance concludes, was a mirror image of the British model of weak engines and superb infrastructure. Vance also explores the railroad's singular role in defining North American space, as lines crossed so varied and undeveloped a landscape. By 1917 the North American railnet had transformed the continent and become the most comprehensive in the world - with a quarter of the world's trackage built in the United States alone, and a third in the US and Canada combined.
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