A Mighty Fine Road - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook A Mighty Fine Road write by H. Roger Grant. This book was released on 2020-10-06. A Mighty Fine Road available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. “Grant has once again hit a home run . . . a detailed but readable history of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, a major Midwestern railroad.” —Carlos A. Schwantes, St. Louis Mercantile Library Professor Emeritus The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad’s history is one of big booms and bigger busts. When it became the first railroad to reach and then cross the Mississippi River in 1856, it emerged as a leading American railroad company. But after aggressive expansion and a subsequent change in management, the company struggled and eventually declared bankruptcy in 1915. What followed was a cycle of resurrections and bankruptcies; a grueling, ten-year, ultimately unsuccessful battle to merge with the Union Pacific; and the Rock Island’s final liquidation in 1981. But today, long after its glory days and eventual demise, the “Mighty Fine Road” has left behind a living legacy of major and feeder lines throughout the country. In his latest work, railroad historian H. Roger Grant offers an accessible, gorgeously illustrated, and comprehensive history of this iconic American railroad. “This handsome, well-illustrated book merits the attention of any reader interested in the history of Iowa. And just as important, the book reminds us of the importance of railroads to the history and vitality of American society. All aboard!” —Iowa City Press-Citizen “A Mighty Fine Road lays out the amazing, yet heartbreaking history of the railroad I loved. The historical opportunities and disappointments of the Rock Island is clearly explained in Grant’s book, with visionaries keeping the dream moving forward, yet damaged and constrained by greed and lack of vision with the next management regime.” —Dan Sabin, President, Iowa Northern Railway Company
A Mighty Fine Road
A Mighty Fine Road - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook A Mighty Fine Road write by H. Roger Grant. This book was released on 2020-10-06. A Mighty Fine Road available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad's history is one of big booms and bigger busts. When it became the first railroad to reach and then cross the Mississippi River in 1856, it emerged as a leading American railroad company. But after aggressive expansion and a subsequent change in management, the company struggled and eventually declared bankruptcy in 1915. What followed was a cycle of resurrections and bankruptcies; a grueling, ten-year, ultimately unsuccessful battle to merge with the Union Pacific; and the Rock Island's final liquidation in 1981. But today, long after its glory days and eventual demise, the "Mighty Fine Road" has left behind a living legacy of major and feeder lines throughout the country. In his latest work, railroad historian H. Roger Grant offers an accessible, gorgeously illustrated, and comprehensive history of this iconic American railroad.
A Mighty Fine Road
A Mighty Fine Road - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook A Mighty Fine Road write by H. Roger Grant. This book was released on 2020-10-06. A Mighty Fine Road available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad's history is one of big booms and bigger busts. When it became the first railroad to reach and then cross the Mississippi River in 1856, it emerged as a leading American railroad company. But after aggressive expansion and a subsequent change in management, the company struggled and eventually declared bankruptcy in 1915. What followed was a cycle of resurrections and bankruptcies; a grueling, ten-year, ultimately unsuccessful battle to merge with the Union Pacific; and the Rock Island's final liquidation in 1981. But today, long after its glory days and eventual demise, the "Mighty Fine Road" has left behind a living legacy of major and feeder lines throughout the country. In his latest work, railroad historian H. Roger Grant offers an accessible, gorgeously illustrated, and comprehensive history of this iconic American railroad.
Rock Island Requiem
Rock Island Requiem - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Rock Island Requiem write by Gregory L. Schneider. This book was released on 2020-02-05. Rock Island Requiem available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Celebrated in history and song, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company—the Rock Island Line—was a powerful Midwestern railroad that once traversed thirteen states with its fast freights and Rocket passenger trains but eventually succumbed to government regulation and a changing economy. Gregory Schneider chronicles the Rock Island’s painful decline and along the way reveals some of the key problems within the American railroad industry during the post–World War II era. Schneider takes readers back to a time when railroads still clung to a storied past to offer new insight into the devastating impact of economic policymaking during the 1960s and 1970s. Schneider recounts the largest railroad liquidation in American history—as well as one of the most successful reorganizations in American business—to depict the demise and ultimate collapse of Rock Island as part of a broader account of hard times in the railroad industry beginning in the 1970s. Schneider weaves a complex story of how business, politics, government bureaucracy, and individual greed helped to limit the economic possibilities of the railroad industry and catapult the Rock Island Railroad into oblivion. Weakened by a troubled economy, the Rock fell victim to inept management and labor union intransigence; but Schneider also reveals how government regulations and price controls prevented innovation, hindered capital acquisition, and favored other forms of transportation that lie beyond the scope of regulation. Railroads were even hurt by taxation of property and real estate while competitors were able to use government-subsidized highways and airports without having to pay taxes to fund them. Now that America has gone on to witness the collapse of such mammoth firms as Enron and Lehman Brothers, not to mention the bankruptcy and bailout of General Motors, the story of the Rock provides an instructive lesson in how a major American enterprise was allowed to fall victim to forces often beyond its control—while the bailout of the Penn Central, at the expense of smaller lines like Rock Island, helped initiate the era of “too big to fail.” For economic historians and railroad buffs alike, Rock Island Requiem is a well-researche
"Follow the Flag"
"Follow the Flag" - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook "Follow the Flag" write by H. Roger Grant. This book was released on 2019-10-15. "Follow the Flag" available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "Follow the Flag" offers the first authoritative history of the Wabash Railroad Company, a once vital interregional carrier. The corporate saga of the Wabash involved the efforts of strong-willed and creative leaders, but this book provides more than traditional business history. Noted transportation historian H. Roger Grant captures the human side of the Wabash, ranging from the medical doctors who created an effective hospital department to the worker-sponsored social events. And Grant has not ignored the impact the Wabash had on businesses and communities in the "Heart of America." Like most major American carriers, the Wabash grew out of an assortment of small firms, including the first railroad to operate in Illinois, the Northern Cross. Thanks in part to the genius of financier Jay Gould, by the early 1880s what was then known as the Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway reached the principal gateways of Chicago, Des Moines, Detroit, Kansas City, and St. Louis. In the 1890s, the Wabash gained access to Buffalo and direct connections to Boston and New York City. One extension, spearheaded by Gould's eldest son, George, fizzled. In 1904 entry into Pittsburgh caused financial turmoil, ultimately throwing the Wabash into receivership. A subsequent reorganization allowed the Wabash to become an important carrier during the go-go years of the 1920s and permitted the company to take control of a strategic "bridge" property, the Ann Arbor Railroad. The Great Depression forced the company into another receivership, but an effective reorganization during the early days of World War II gave rise to a generally robust road. Its famed Blue Bird streamliner, introduced in 1950 between Chicago and St. Louis, became a widely recognized symbol of the "New Wabash." When "merger madness" swept the railroad industry in the 1960s, the Wabash, along with the Nickel Plate Road, joined the prosperous Norfolk & Western Railway, a merger that worked well for all three carriers. Immortalized in the popular folk song "Wabash Cannonball," the midwestern railroad has left important legacies. Today, forty years after becoming a "fallen flag" carrier, key components of the former Wabash remain busy rail arteries and terminals, attesting to its historic value to American transportation.
