Publisher's Synopsis
"A sweeping history of railroads in America" (New Yorker)
By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a lattice-work of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years, but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads, and the nation started to forget them.
In The Great Railroad Revolution, renowned railroad expert Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and fall of one of the greatest American endeavors. The time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its often-overlooked rail heritage.
