With so many books available at your local hobby shop, (We entered more than
120 into this list with our first compilation) weeding out the useful ones from
the duds can be a daunting task. It is our hope that you will be able
to use this area to find the types of information that you're interested in.
While you're at it, why not take a minute and tell us what you think of some of
the publications that you have read. The submission form is simple and
quick, and your opinions matter.
The General & the Texas: A
Pictorial History of the Andrews Raid, April 12, 1862
By Stan Cohen, James G. Bogle
/ Pictorial Histories Publishing Company / May 1999
On April 12, 1862, twenty Union soldiers
and two civilians stole a train powered by a locomotive named "The
General" just north of Atlanta. Their mission was to drive the train north
to Chattanooga, destroying bridges, railways, and rolling stock along the
way. Confederates, however, commandeered several engines, including "The
Texas, " and initiated what became known as "The Great Locomotive Chase."
Two movies and numerous books have been dedicated to this chapter in
American history, but this is the first pictorial account of the incident.
A thorough narrative is accompanied by numerous archival photographs,
drawings, and maps associated with raid. After abandoning their mission,
eight of the Union soldiers were executed and the remainder exchanged for
Confederate POWs. The first Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to
the Union soldiers who participated.
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Fascinating recounts as told at the time. One
of my favorites. - L. L.
The Northern Railroads in the
Civil War, 1861-1865
By Thomas Weber / Indiana
University Press / March 1999
Time has been very
good to Thomas Weber's premier account of the impact of the railroads on the
American Civil War and vice versa. Although it has been out of print since the
1970s, it has never been out of demand. Weber's analysis shows not only how the
North was helped to victory through its effective use of the rails, but also how
the war changed the way railroads were built, run and financed in the years
after the war.
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Nothing Like It In the World :
The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869
By Stephen Ambrose / Simon &
Schuster / November 2001
Nothing Like It in the World gives the
account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage. It
is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad -- the
investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened
politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who
risked, and sometimes lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese
immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other laborers who
did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks. Linn Westcott
explains how to convert the plans for use in the various model scales and
how to build a layout from a plan.
The U.S. government pitted two companies --
the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads -- against each other
in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. Locomotives, rails,
and spikes were shipped from the East through Panama or around South
America to the West or lugged across the country to the Plains. In
Ambrose's hands, this enterprise, with its huge expenditure of brainpower,
muscle, and sweat, comes vibrantly to life.
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Railroads in the Civil War:
The Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat
By John Elwood Clark /
Louisiana State University Press / December 2001
"Despite popular depictions in film and
print, soldiers in the American Civil War did not always travel by horse,
wagon, or foot. Advances in railroad systems in the decade before the war
allowed the movement of large numbers of troops via railway, even through
railroads had not yet matured into a truly integrated transportation
system. Gaps between lines, incompatible track gauges, and other vexing
impediments remained in both the North and South. As John E. Clark Jr.
explains in this compelling study, the skill with which Union and
Confederate war leaders dealt with those problems and utilized the rail
system to its fullest wartime potential reflects each side's overall war
management ability as an essential ingredient for ultimate victory." After
providing an excellent overview of Union and Confederate railway
capabilities and effectiveness at decision-making. Clark details two
specific rail movements as case studies in logistical management - the
Confederacy's transfer of General James Longstreet's 13,000 men from the
Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of Tennessee in the fall of 1863 and
the Union's responding shift of 23,000 soldiers in the 11th and 12th Corps
into the western theater, movements key to the battles at Chickamauga and
Chattanooga. Using exciting stories found in diaries and letters as well
as official records and telegrams. Clark explains how the Union wisely and
confidently organized and directed and massive undertaking and how the
Confederacy, having failed to properly mobilize its rail system for war,
did not.
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Tracks to the Sea: Galveston
and Western Railroad Development, 1866-1900
By Earle B. Young / Texas A&M
University Press / September 1999
In Tracks to the Sea: Galveston and Western
Railroad Development, 1866-1900, Earle B. Young traces the efforts of
"railroad generals" Jay Gould and Collis Huntington to control Texas'
railroad ventures, as well as the struggles of the new railroads built
during this era, such as the Houston and Great Northern; the Gulf,
Colorado and Santa Fe; and the Houston and Texas Central. Young also
examines the men behind the rails, and the goals and rivalries which
shaped the routes and profits of Texas railroads, especially Galveston's
George Sealy in his battle with New York's Gould for the route to the
thriving seaport and Gould's competition with Huntington over who would
dominate the southwestern lines.
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