This photo history has extended captions covering the important coal-hauling railroad, connecting the coal fields with Great Lakes shipping at Toledo, Huron, Loraine, and Cleveland. Picturesque photos cover the 1860s to 1949 mergers with the Nickel Plate Road. Corns covers subjects that include stations, small and large, old and new steam locomotives, cars, terminals, and other facilities. Over 40,000 words of text in the extended captions gives the reader a detailed description of the railway.

For over 130 years, the Erie Railroad's Newburgh branch was a key factor in the economic and social life of the city of Newburgh, New York, and the towns that had stations along its 19-mile route between Newburgh and the Erie main line. Only five miles of this once vital rail link survive today. Looking at this lightly used rail spur today, the casual passerby would have no hint of the rich history that can be seen for only a moment from the car window. Erie Railroad's Newburgh Branch will take both dedicated and new railfans back to the days when rail travel was every town's modern mode of transport as well as its economic lifeblood. It was a simpler time, before the age of air travel and America's love affair with a new invention called the automobile.

This 50-year saga of the "Weary Erie" describes in vivid detail the turbulent last decades of a colorful, spunky, and innovative railroad. It also tells us much about what happened to American railroading, during this period: technological change, governmental over-regulation, corporate mergers, union "featherbedding," uneven executive leadership, and changing patterns of travel and business. The book is illustrated with 45 photographs and drawings and 4 maps.

From 1866 until 1979, Erie was one of the largest coal-producing towns in the nation. Numerous settlers contributed to building Old Town and making it one of the liveliest communities in northern Colorado. The Columbine Mine massacre in 1927 incited major changes to coal mining practices, inspiring unionization efforts nationally. The improved rights and working conditions that miners struggled to win benefit employees across America today. Emeritus Professor James B. Stull illuminates Erie's earliest pioneers, houses, schools and churches and the town's enduring evolution.

Andrew Carnegie's vision of transporting iron ore from his boats on Lake Erie to his Pittsburgh steel mills was realized when he obtained ownership of a series of railroad companies in the region. In 1900, these companies became the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad, which connected the Lake Erie ports of Erie, Pennsylvania, and Conneaut, Ohio, south to North Bessemer near Pittsburgh. Through vintage photographs, Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad highlights the railroad passenger excursions to Conneaut Lake Park and the steam and diesel locomotives used on the well-maintained line. The railroad continues to serve the steel industry today and in May 2004 was acquired by the Canadian National Railway.