Empire Express Building the First Transcontinental Railroad DJ 1999

$9.23

RailroadTreasures offers the following item:

Preface

I have always lived within the sound of a train whistle, whether it was the Pennsylvania (upon whose tracks countless pennies were flattened), the Baltimore and Ohio, the Long Island, the New Haven, Conrail. the Boston-Charles River freight yard, the IND. or the IRT. And for twelve years it's been Amtrak on the Delaware and Hudson tracks, six miles away across rolling farmlands and Lake Champlain. Train stories, train lore, train movies, and train songs chugged through my childhood-of course I had a Lionel set-and as an adult I'd rather take Amtrak than my car or a plane. No contest.

The first book I read on the first transcontinental railroad was one in the Landmark Books series. I was eleven. Little did I know that twenty-five years later, after I had begun writing books about politics and history, that an editor would see one reviewed, read the book,call me up, and issue a challenge: Would I consider writing a book on the first transcontinental railroad? Deep in the tunnels of my brain I heard a whistle calling. While it's perfectly possible that it was only the IND slowing for the Seventh Avenue subway stop in Brooklyn, where I then lived. I like to think it was an echo of old Jupiter or Number 119 at the Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory. Nevertheless, I'm grateful to the challenger, Amanda Vaill then of Viking and now a respected writer herself. With that challenge she allowed me to rejoin a lifelong love for Ortrains, and a similarly long and deep fascination for the nineteenth century, particularly the Civil War and the old West. Ellen Levine, my literary agent and dear friend of many adventures, was instrumental in making the dream a possibility. Our adventures were not over, and I trust will not be for many years to come.

At Viking, as the project took shape. I was so fortunate to have the faith and patience of Kathryn Court and Barbara Grossman, friends from my long-ago publishing days. Their encouragement across the years helped make this fourteen-year project what it is. And I'm grateful for all the good work and support of Stephanie Curd, and also Tory Klose. Janet Renard, Beena Kam-Ian'. Gail Belenson, Jaye Zimet, Ivan Held. Paul Slovak, and Giovanni Favretti. Soon after I began, I realized how many had previously attempted to tell the epic tale of the first transcontinental, and how much they relied on previously published work: a cycle of stories (some of them myths) thus became endlessly recycled and repeated. Aside from two very good biographies of Collis P. Huntington (by David Lavender) and Grenville M. Dodge (by Stanley Hirshson), there had been three books published in the mid-sixties, right before the Golden Spike centennial. But that was of no matter, for beckoning me were all the original sources, the handwritten letters, journals, business records, telegraph forms, official reports, and eyewitness journalism. Particularly helpful were the elaborately detailed inventories at the University of Iowa and the Nebraska State Historical Society (major Union Pacific repositories), at the University of California, Berkeley (the Central Pacific. where H. H. Ban-croft's staff tirelessly followed his collection fever), at the California State Railroad Museum, and at the California State Library, where I also found, and copied with a blunt pencil stub, score upon score of handwritten subject cards for California newspapers. I also count myself lucky to have done two years of research at the extraordinary New York Public Library while the peerless card catalogues were still in existence.

As I forged ahead, two other books caught up with me in the late eighties. One, the authoritative official corporate history of the Union Pacific by Maury Klein, might have slowed my own research for a year or two as he had priority access to Union Pacific microfilm records, but it was worth the wait. His telling of one side of the transcontinental story (and the years beyond, to the end of the century) was well done, and his superior business sense helped me wade through high corporate financial records and dealings. My debt to him is real.

As I plowed through the mostly handwritten material, one particular collection became supremely important: the contents of Collis P. Huntington's New York office of the Central Pacific, with its voluminous letters from all the principals. Given to Syracuse University, and later microfilmed and widely distributed to libraries around the country. I found that earlier researchers had barely touched the surface of its thousands of handwritten pages, and perhaps to no wonder. The handwriting of the five principals often defeated a cursory reading, complicated by the fact that most of the six-, eight-, or ten-page letters had been microfilmed out of page order. I became familiar with their scrawls and pieced together the letters. What I found there proved that previous writers had been mostly defeated at getting into the collection-refutations of myths passed down for generations, and exciting, extraordinary voices unheard for 1 30 years, quotations any historian or journalist would behave shamelessly to obtain. The Union Pacific side yielded many new surprises, too: by going even to a much-quoted document and reading the original, one often finds quotations left out, inconvenient facts glossed over, and puzzle pieces useful somewhere else.

All along the way I was conscious of what I felt were the subject's marching orders: Put the story into a larger national context and take advantage of the exciting research done in recent decades on Native Americans, women of the plains and high country, immigrants, and other people below the radar scope of traditional historians' "great men" narratives. Placing these perspectives within the context of the transcontinental race, and the railroads' story into focus with larger national political and cultural events, was an important part of the mission.

All pictures are of the actual item. If this is a railroad item, this material is obsolete and no longer in use by the railroad. Please email with questions. Publishers of Train Shed Cyclopedias and Stephans Railroad Directories. Large inventory of railroad books and magazines. Thank you for buying from us.

Shipping charges

Postage rates quoted are for shipments to the US only. Ebay Global shipping charges are shown. These items are shipped to Kentucky and then ebay ships them to you. Ebay collects the shipping and customs / import fees. For direct postage rates to these countries, send me an email. Shipping to Canada and other countries varies by weight.

Payment options

Payment must be received within 10 days. Paypal is accepted.

Terms and conditions

All sales are final. Returns accepted if item is not as described. Contact us first. No warranty is stated or implied. Please e-mail us with any questions before bidding.

Thanks for looking at our items.