Product Description

At its postwar peak, the North American railroad industry comprised as many as 100 lines. The classic system maps produced by the railroads of the day, collected for the first time in this volume, offer a sweeping view of the industry’s remarkable reach in the period of its greatest power. Each railroad’s routes unfold in multi-page spreads featuring a capsule history, vital specs such as track mileage and years of operation, and period photographs, all detailing the mid-twentieth-century might of North American railroads.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #222212 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

Review

“A compact and interesting volume for any railfan’s collection.”

About the Author
Bill Yenne is the author of several MBI titles, including Attack of the Drones, On the Trail of Lewis & Clark, and Great Northern Empire Builders. He and his family reside in the Noe Valley district of San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

Not what I had hoped for
This book contains lots of maps of railroads, as the title suggests. I'm not intentionally being flippant, but that about sums it up. It is a good historical reference, but sorely lacking as a comprehensive tool for viewing existing lines and rail traffic and railroad ownership. I was a history major, so the history was interesting to me, if sketchy, and it was interesting to see what railroad topography looked like in Florida, for example, in 1810, but again, not useful as a modern tool. I was expecting a railroad atlas, state by state, something like what one would get from AAA for highways. This is not that, just to warn you, but for what the authors intended I'm sure it is excellent.

Atlas of North American Railroads
This is not a typical atlas in the classical definition of the term. Rather the author somehow found maps produced by the several railroads he covers in his book to provide the mapped details of each specific route. This makes it a bit unconventional and some who think every atlas author should provide original maps may well be disappointed. But I like this book. I give the author credit for finding so many different maps. Some actually are available online, but others seem to come from railroad promotional literature (and difficult to find except for true railroad collectors).

The scope of the book is surprisingly broad. Some of the railroads shown here have been defunct for decades. The book has good text and several photos that show lines that many people only know as memories. It covers modern routes that have emerged from buyouts and mergers (i.e., BNSF) but omits Amtrak. This book has good nostalgia value but the maps, regardless of their origin, are quite informative. A good historian can decipher information for any type of source, even old rail route maps. I enjoy reviewing this book and recommend it fully.

An Attractive Workhorse of a Book
Bill Yenne's atlas is mostly a compendium of historical maps -- I don't think there's an original map among the hundred-plus in the book. The majority are railway system maps from the Golden Age of the American passenger railway (ca. 1930-1950), but there's U.S. Army survey maps going back to 1831 (for the Baltimore & Ohio) and modern route maps from 2004 (Canadian National) and 2005 (Burlington Northern Santa Fe). The maps, as you may have gathered by now, are organized by railway system, not by date or region. There are also a number of attractive, but not particularly gripping, photographs of trains on the various lines -- this is a book primarily for the committed enthusiast, not for the curious amateur. Fortunately, as a committed enthusiast of atlases, if not of trains, I found plenty of interest, not least the shift in graphic design over the century and a half covered here. The index is not top notch (no mention of the Empire Builder in it, for example) but fairly serviceable. Not every rail line or company in North America gets coverage, but the vast majority fall either under their own entries or those of their immediate predecessors or successors in the Darwinian chain of rail competition. The entries are terse, but reasonably complete, and some even take time to note, for example, that "Casey" Jones and the City of New Orleans both have the Illinois Central (the former tracks of which run six blocks east of my house) in common. In short, this book is a fine reference work, highly recommended for railroad buffs in need of a comprehensive set of route maps, or map buffs in need of the same.