"Do not think of the Pennsylvania Railroad as a business enterprise," Forbes magazine informed its readers in May 1936. "Think of it as a nation." At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business corporation in the world. In 1914, the PRR employed more than two hundred thousand people—more than double the number of soldiers in the United States Army. As the self-proclaimed "Standard Railroad of the World," this colossal corporate body underwrote American industrial expansion and shaped the economic, political, and social environment of the United States. In turn, the PRR was fundamentally shaped by the American landscape, adapting to geography as well as shifts in competitive economics and public policy. Albert J. Churella's masterful account, certain to become the authoritative history of the Pennsylvania Railroad, illuminates broad themes in American history, from the development of managerial practices and labor relations to the relationship between business and government to advances in technology and transportation. Churella situates exhaustive archival research on the Pennsylvania Railroad within the social, economic, and technological changes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, chronicling the epic history of the PRR intertwined with that of a developing nation. This first volume opens with the development of the Main Line of Public Works, devised by Pennsylvanians in the 1820s to compete with the Erie Canal. Though a public rather than a private enterprise, the Main Line foreshadowed the establishment of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1846. Over the next decades, as the nation weathered the Civil War, industrial expansion, and labor unrest, the PRR expanded despite competition with rival railroads and disputes with such figures as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. The dawn of the twentieth century brought a measure of stability to the railroad industry, enabling the creation of such architectural monuments as Pennsylvania Station in New York City. The volume closes at the threshold of American involvement in World War I, as the strategies that PRR executives had perfected in previous decades proved less effective at guiding the company through increasingly tumultuous economic and political waters.

Traces the history of the railroad during the height of its success, looks at its locomotive and rolling stock, and shares employee anecdotes.

This volume reproduces almost 100 remarkably detailed and texturally rich photographs. Essays by noted historians John Stilgoe, Mary Panzer, and Kenneth Finkel place Rau and his work in the context of the history of American advertising and landscape photography.

This book uses the contents of the official 1952 Pennsylvania RR passenger train consist book detailing the make-up of its east-west trains. The author supplements this data with a general introduction about PRR service of the period, and introduces each train with a description of its make-up, service, and cars used. Color photos illustrate many of the cars used in the era. B&W and Color photos show typical trains. Illustrations of menus and ads complete the book.

From humble beginnings in the 1800s, the Pennsylvania Railroad grew to be one of the most powerful, influential railroads in American history--a railroad that Fortune Magazine called “a nation unto itself.” It owned its own shops, coal mines, hotels, communications system, and power plants, not to mention hundreds of depots (including the famous Penn Station in Manhattan), thousands of passenger cars, tens of thousands of freight cars, and a vast fleet of steam, electric, and diesel locomotives. The Pennsy’s 10,000 route-miles served thirteen of the most populous and most industrialized states in the United States. Pennsylvania Railroad examines the mighty railroad’s evolution from a disparate group of early horse car lines into a twentieth-century transportation giant. Color and black-and-white photographs and period ads illustrate the railroad’s many facets, including both its passenger and freight operations, as well its motive power through the decades. Though the Pennsy was merged out of existence in 1968, an epilogue details the PRR legacies that survive on today’s modern railroad scene.

The saga of a fierce business rivalry: “Absorbing, well-written . . . will appeal to American history scholars and railroad enthusiasts.” —Choice The Pennsylvania and the New York Central railroads helped to develop central Pennsylvania as the largest source of bituminous coal for the nation. By the late nineteenth century, the two lines were among America’s largest businesses and would soon become legendary archrivals. The PRR first arrived in the 1860s. Within a few years, it was sourcing as much as four million tons of coal annually from Centre County and the Moshannon Valley and would continue do so for a quarter-century. The New York Central, through its Beech Creek Railroad affiliate, invaded the region in the 1880s, first seeking a dependable, long-term source of coal to fuel its locomotives but soon aggressively attempting to break its rival’s lock on transporting the area’s immense wealth of mineral and forest products. Beginning around 1900, the two companies transitioned from an era of growth and competition to a time when each tacitly recognized the other’s domain and sought to achieve maximum operating efficiencies by adopting new technology such as air brakes, automatic couplers, all-steel cars, and diesel locomotives. Over the next few decades, each line began to face common problems in the form of competition from other forms of transportation and government regulation—and in 1968, the two businesses merged. Branch Line Empires offers a thorough and captivating analysis of how a changing world turned competition into cooperation between two railroad industry titans. Includes photographs

Rail and train enthusiasts will treasure this indispensable guide to the Pennsylvania Railroad's late, great steam locomotives from the first half of the last century. From 1900-1957, a brilliant and dedicated engineering team brought the most powerfully efficient locomotives in the nation, and made "The Standard Railway of the World."

Based on original letters, documents, diaries, and newspaper reports, The Railroad That Never Was uncovers the truth behind this mysterious railway.