If you were assembling a canon or must reading list for persons intered in the business history of (North American) Railroading, what would you pick? I have a couple of suggestions/favorites:

From Steam to Diesel: Managerial Customs and Organizational Capabilities in the Twentieth-Century American Locomotive Industry (Albert Churella)

The Baldwin Locomotive Works 1831-1915 (John K. Brown)

Enterprise Denied: origins of the decline of American railroads 1897-1917 (Albro Martin)

Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection & Rebirth of a Vital American Force (Albro Martin)



superheater@rrmail.com

Recommended by others in the business field:

The Maury Klein 2-volume history of Union Pacific

Klein's "Life and Legend of Jay Gould"

I might also plug Fred Frailey's "Twilight of the Great Trains" for blending business and railfan history of the "end" of railroad passenger trains in North America........

LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net

Here are my picks.

1.)Chandler, Alfred DuPont. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American
Business. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1977.
-THE book on American business history development. Chandler changed the way we look at business history today. He also spends a great deal of time focusing on the railroad industry.

2.) Taylor, George R. The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. New York: Reinhart, 1951.
-This book is a bit old, but still inportant in the overall literature of railroad business history.

3.) Taylor, George R. The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1956.
-This book is still in print, I think from University of Illinois Press.

4.) Chandler, Alfred DuPont. The Railroads, the Nation's First Big Business; Sources and
Readings. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965.
-A good companion for Chandler's other book.

5.)Ely, James W. Railroads and American Law. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas,
2001.
-Good book, tells the story of how unintended consiquences nearly ruined a once-great industry.

6.)Thomas, William G. Lawyering for the Railroad: Business, Law, and Power in the New South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999.
-Good companion to Ely's book. Not as strong in overall thesis, but worth the read.

7.)Stover, John F. The Railroads of the South, 1865-1900: A Study in Finance and Control.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955.
-Old but worth looking at.

8.)Curry, Leonard. Rail Routes South: LouisvilleÂ’s Fight for the Southern Market, 1865-1872. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1969.
-Good book, often underlooked. I have to plug this, as the author graduated from where I went to undergrad.

9.) Licht, Walter. Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983.
-Good!

10.) Klein, Maury. Unfinished Business, The Railroad in American Life. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1994.
-Anything by Klein is good, but his "swan song" is a good compilation of his work on railroad history.

11.)TO BE WRITTEN

-With the exception of Stover's book, American Railroads, and Aldo Martin's Railroads Triumphant, there has been no good, scholarly look at railroad history in America. From someone in the history field, economic and business history isn't the "in" field to be in today. Social history continues to dominate the historical agenda, and I think it leaves a vast area undercovered. Still, after reading these ten books, and some more, you can gain a good understanding of railroad business history. Enjoy!

david.wilkins@bardstown.com

It has been a long time since I was a student of economics and transportation, but one little book stands out as providing some very interesting insights into the history of regulation of American railroads: "Railroads and Regulation 1877-1916" by Gabriel Kolko, published by Princeton University Press, 1965....only 273 pages. Kolko had quite a reputation as a left-wing economist, which perhaps made him a bit of a cynic. But it produced an interpretation of that period that for me had the "ring of truth".

jbwest@att.net

A little book called THE METROPOLITAN CORRIDOR ties the business and social aspects of railroading on society together in some interesting ways.

dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

"A History of the Texas Railroads"; S.G. Reed, Ayer Company Publishers, Reprint Edition 2000. First published in 1941, the author ties the history of railroads in Texas with the business background of the era from mid 1850's to the time when the book was first published.

retsquid@tvec.net

> If you were assembling a canon or must
> reading list for persons intered in the
> business history of (North American)
> Railroading, what would you pick?

"The Passenger Train in the Motor Age", by Gregory Lee Thompson, in the series "Historical Perspectives on Business Enterprise" from Ohio State University Press.

pnichol6@prodigy.net