Includes 4 figures, 13 maps and 4 tables. Renowned Military Historian Dr Christopher Gabel investigates the effects of the Railroad on the strategies employed by both the Union and Confederate Generals of the Civil War. According to an old saying, “amateurs study tactics: professionals study logistics.” Any serious student of the military profession will know that logistics constantly shape military affairs and sometimes even dictate strategy and tactics. This excellent monograph by Dr. Christopher Gabel shows that the appearance of the steam-powered railroad had enormous implications for military logistics, and thus for strategy, in the American Civil War. Not surprisingly, the side that proved superior in “railroad generalship,” or the utilization of the railroads for military purposes, was also the side that won the war.

It took ten years of laborious planning and exhaustive negotiations to create the mammoth Penn Central Railroad, the largest railroad in United States history. When the leviathan was finally born of a merger between the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads on February 1, 1968, the event was hailed as a great day for railroading. But the baby giant survived only 367 days. The crash of the Penn Central set a new record, this time for the largest bankruptcy the United States had ever seen. "The Wreck of the Penn Central" provides a close-up view of the events that brought the Big Train to bankruptcy court--over-regulation, subsidized competition, big labor featherbedding, greed, corporate back-stabbing, stunning incompetence, and, yes, even a little sex.