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Amtrak trains sitting on tracks at a rail yard.
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America Doesn't Deserve Fast Trains

For 70 years, the U.S. has failed to achieve faster trains—because it refuses to do what it takes to make them work.
by David Alff via Made By History on December 11, 2023
1877 political cartoon of a skeleton descending on a railroad, reading "the rioters' railroad to ruin."

Strikers, Octopi, and Visible Hands: The Railroad and American Capitalism

The railroad company remains a site for Americans to grapple with key questions about the nature of American capitalism.
by Scott Huffard via Clio and the Contemporary on December 20, 2022
Lithograph of federal troops crushing an 1877 rail strike.

Freight-Halting Strikes Are Rare, and This Would be the First in 3 Decades

Some rail unions are resisting government pressure to accept a new employment contract, but history suggests the authorities will keep the trains running.
by Erik Loomis via The Conversation on November 22, 2022
Black and white image of workmen standing on or outside of a train.

Riding with Du Bois

Railroads—in the Jim Crow South just as in today’s Ukraine—employ physical infrastructure to create racial divisions.
by Manu Karuka via Public Books on October 18, 2022
Black and white photo of people taking fish out of a train car.

Remembering When Fish Rode the Rails

For decades, salmon, catfish, and trout traveled in America's fleet of "Fish Cars."
by Jonathan Feakins via Atlas Obscura on August 2, 2022
Cover of "The Deportation Express"

How American Deportation Trains Represent a Century of American Immigration Policy

"The Deportation Express: A History of America through Forced Removal" traces the historical roots and spatial routes of systemic denial, arrest, and removal from the United States.
by Ethan Blue via University Of California Press Blog on April 1, 2022
Map of the Baltimore B&O railroad

The B&O Railroad From Municipal Enterprise To Private Corporation

A cautionary tale about the costs and benefits of public/private partnerships.
by Matthew A. Crenson via The Metropole on March 9, 2022
Illustrated cargo ship surrounded by a train loop.

How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded

Rail deregulation led to consolidation, price-gouging, and a variant of just-in-time unloading that left no slack in the system.
by Matthew Jinoo Buck via The American Prospect on February 4, 2022

Before Interstates, America Got Around on Interurbans

The fate of electrified “rural trolleys” at the beginning of 20th century could offer lessons for today’s train boosters.
by Vince Guerrieri via CityLab on October 6, 2021
Map of Pittsburgh Coal Company rate schedules

Coalminers and Coordination Rights

In the two decades before the Hepburn Act’s enactment, two entities vied for the right to coordinate the price and distribution of coal.
by Branden Adams via LPE Project on July 15, 2021
Black and white photo of locomotive on railroad tracks.

Camera and Locomotive

Railroads and photography, developed largely in parallel and brought about drastic changes in how people understood time and space.
by Micah Messenheimer via Library of Congress on September 18, 2019

For 40 Years, Crashing Trains Was One of America’s Favorite Pastimes

From 1896 until the 1930s, showmen would travel the country staging wrecks at state fairs.
by Justin Franz via Atlas Obscura on July 1, 2019
Rail yard in Chicago.

Jack Delano's Color Photos of Chicago's Rail Yards in the 1940s

A handful of images from Chicago as it was some 75 years ago.
by Alan Taylor via The Atlantic on October 2, 2018

Why New York City Stopped Building Subways

Nearly 80 years ago, a construction standstill derailed the subway into its present crisis.
by Jonathan English via CityLab on April 16, 2018

Victorian Era Drones: How Model Trains Transformed from Cutting-Edge to Quaint

Nostalgia and technological innovation paved the way for the rise of model-train giant Lionel.
by Ben Marks via Collectors Weekly on February 1, 2017
A subterranean shot of the Lexington Avenue station, which made a loop around City Hall, in the early 1900s.

October 27, 1904: The New York City Subway System Opens

“The bearing of this upon social conditions can hardly be overestimated.”
by Richard Kreitner via The Nation on November 3, 1904
Black and white photograph of the Opening of the New York City Subway, 1904.

Advertising Etiquette: On Shaping the New York City Subway

NYC subway etiquette reflects socio-economic divides.
by Simone Blandford via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on November 21, 2024
Chinese laborers engaged to work on the American Transcontinental Railroad system.

America's First Major Immigration Crackdown and the Making and Breaking of the West

Chinese immigrants sacrificed to create America's first transcontinental railroad. Its completion contributed to a backlash that led to immigration clampdown.
by Greg Rosalsky via NPR on November 19, 2024
Fleet of Spirit Airways planes on airport tarmac

The Spirit Airlines Paradox

Without smart regulation, price competition turns into a race to the bottom.
by Phillip Longman via The Atlantic on January 19, 2024
Bison drinking from a pond.

How the Iron Horse Spelled Doom for the American Buffalo

From homesteaders to tourists to the U.S. Army, railroads flooded the Great Plains with people who saw bison as pests, amusements, or opportunities for profit.
by Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan via Literary Hub on October 16, 2023
A herd of bison running.

Speaking Wind-Words

Tracing the transformation of the Great Plains to the widespread belief in “manifest destiny,” and weighing the power of words to shape landscapes.
by Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder via Emergence Magazine on August 17, 2023
Sign advertising land for sale, near sign marking entrance to Mojave National Preserve.

The American West’s Great Checkerboard Problem

As long as the U.S. system privileges private property, thousands of acres of public lands will remain off limits.
by Julia Sizek via Zócalo Public Square on August 8, 2023
A photograph of John William Boucher superimposed over a collage of newspaper headlines about him being the oldest soldier in WWI.

The 72-Year-Old Who Lied About His Age to Fight in World War I

A Civil War veteran, John William Boucher was one of the oldest men on the ground during the Great War.
by Nick Yetto via Smithsonian on June 2, 2023
A train yard in Montgomery, Alabama, 1897

The Ballad of Railroad Bill

The story of Morris Slater, aka Railroad Bill, prompts us to ask how the legend of the "American outlaw" changes when race is involved.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Burgin Mathews, John W. Roberts via JSTOR Daily on March 20, 2023
Smoke rises from a derailed cargo train in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 4.
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The Air Pollution Disaster that Echoes in the Ohio Train Derailment

What is an industry-made disaster, and what is caused by natural factors like weather?
by Cassondra Hanna via Made By History on February 22, 2023
A photograph of James Eads How superimposed over a photograph of vagrant workers at a train station.

St. Louis' Wealthy "King of the Hobos"

Labeled a local eccentric, millionaire James Eads How used his inherited wealth to support vagrant communities.
by Marc Blanc via Belt Magazine on February 8, 2023
Technology and California graphic.

Blame Palo Alto

From Stanford to Silicon Valley, a small town in California spread tech’s gospel of data and control.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on February 6, 2023
Detail from a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers graphic, 1877.

America’s Oldest Railway Union Must Break With Its Right-Wing Past

Why does the government have the power to break massive union strikes? Part of the story is a history of conciliatory railway unionism.
by Maya Adereth via Jacobin on January 9, 2023
Illustration depicting workmen and firemen dragging a fireman and engineer from a Baltimore freight train during the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad strike.

The Railway Labor Act Allowed Congress to Break the Rail Strike. We Should Get Rid of It.

Congress was able to break the rail strike last week because of a century-old law designed to weaken the disruptive power of unions.
by Nelson Lichtenstein, Andrew Yamakawa Elrod via Jacobin on December 7, 2022
Khalifa International Stadium near Doha, Qatar.

Qatar, the World Cup & the Echoes of History

How stadiums in Qatar connect to a bridge in Kentucky and a dam in West Virginia.
by Jason Steinhauer via History Club on December 4, 2022
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