From 1880 through the 1950s, the New York, Ontario & Western Railway hauled coal from the rich anthracite deposits of eastern Pennsylvania to homes throughout the eastern United States and Canada. In Hard Coal and Coal Cars, Martin Robert Karig chronicles the rise and fall of the O & W's coal hauling operation in a richly illustrated work that interweaves economic, industrial, and technological history. Karig opens his history with the intense competition for the rights to eastern Pennsylvania's lucrative coal-hauling business. He then details the technological developments that transformed coal cars from wooden carts carrying just a few hundred pounds to steel hoppers hauling several tons. Bringing the story into the twentieth century, Karig explains how the O & W's ownership ultimately abandoned the coal-hauling business in the 1950s as coal was supplanted by more reliable and convenient home heating fuels. Rich with the romance of the railroad and crucial to any understanding of Pennsylvania history, Hard Coal and Coal Cars will be the definitive book on a fascinating chapter of American life.

Railroads--and the efficient, cheap transport they offered between developing cities--were one of the primary catalysts of the Industrial Revolution in both England and the United States. But it was the coal carried by those trains that allowed these cities to grow, expand, and flourish. Martin Robert Karig's landmark book, Coal Cars, is the story of the wide variety of railroad cars that transported that most essential of commodities to new markets. Coal Cars is the comprehensive study of the freight cars that conveyed coal across broad swaths of land that had been impassible before the invention of the steam engine. This groundbreaking volume traces the history and evolution of coal cars from their earliest use in England to the construction of major railways for the purpose of coal hauling and the end of the steam era on American railroads. In addition to contextualizing coal cars in the annals of industrial history, the book features extensive design specifications and drawings as well as a complete history of the various safety and mechanical innovations employed on these freight cars. It concludes with a photographic essay illustrating the development of the coal car over its first 300 years of use. Crucial to any understanding of American and European history, Coal Cars will be the definitive book on a fascinating chapter of railroad life.

An epic and revelatory narrative of the most important transportation technology of the modern world In his wide-ranging and entertaining new book, Tom Zoellner—coauthor of the New York Times–bestselling An Ordinary Man—travels the globe to tell the story of the sociological and economic impact of the railway technology that transformed the world—and could very well change it again. From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the Japanese-style bullet trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of this most indispensable form of travel. A masterful narrative history, Train also explores the sleek elegance of railroads and their hypnotizing rhythms, and explains how locomotives became living symbols of sex, death, power, and romance.

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