A guidebook to the museum in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, covering the history of the state's railroad industry, with a tour of the 100,000-square-foot exhibit hall, which displays dozens of historic locomotives and rolling stock significant to Pennsylvania's railroad heritage. A complete checklist of the museum's collection of rolling stock is included.

Traces the history of the railroad during the height of its success, looks at its locomotive and rolling stock, and shares employee anecdotes.

When the Strasburg Rail Road was chartered in 1832, no one anticipated the myriad of obstacles the short line would encounter. What began as an afterthought in the early 19th century eventually became one of America's premier steam train excursions and the most visited heritage railroad in the continental United States. By 1957, the declining condition of its rails and the lack of freight and passenger service seemed to mark the end of the railroad, but it was given new life in 1958, and not even the wildest imagination foresaw the remarkable transformation and development this "Methuselah of railroads" would undergo. This book chronicles the unlikely success of America's oldest continuously operating railroad. Explore how and why Strasburg's four-and-a-half-mile line survived, and discover the story behind its ascension to prominence as an iconic, internationally known, small-town steam railroad.

An award-winning biography of one of the Confederacy’s most colorful and controversial generals. Winner of the 2013 Nathan Bedford Forrest History Book Award for Southern History Nominated for the 2014 Virginia Book Award for Nonfiction Despite a life full of drama, politics, and adventure, little has been written about William “Extra Billy” Smith—aside from a rather biased account by his brother-in-law back in the nineteenth century. As the oldest and one of the most controversial Confederate generals on the field at Gettysburg, Smith was also one of the most charismatic characters of the Civil War and the antebellum Old South. Known nationally as “Extra Billy” because of his prewar penchant for finding loopholes in government postal contracts to gain extra money for his stagecoach lines, Smith served as Virginia’s governor during both the war with Mexico and the Civil War; served five terms in the US Congress; and was one of Virginia’s leading spokesmen for slavery and states’ rights. Extra Billy’s extra-long speeches and wry sense of humor were legendary among his peers. A lawyer during the heady Gold Rush days, he made a fortune in California—and, as with his income earned from stagecoaches, quickly lost it. Despite his advanced age, Smith took to the field and fought well at First Manassas, was wounded at Seven Pines and again at Sharpsburg, and marched with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania. There, on the first day at Gettysburg, Smith’s frantic messages about a possible Union flanking attack remain a matter of controversy to this day. Did his aging eyes see distant fence-lines that he interpreted as approaching enemy soldiers—mere phantoms of his imagination? Or did his prompt action stave off a looming Confederate disaster? This biography draws upon a wide array of newspapers, diaries, letters, and other firsthand accounts to paint a portrait of one of the South’s most interesting leaders, complete with original maps and photos.

From humble beginnings in the 1800s, the Pennsylvania Railroad grew to be one of the most powerful, influential railroads in American history--a railroad that Fortune Magazine called “a nation unto itself.” It owned its own shops, coal mines, hotels, communications system, and power plants, not to mention hundreds of depots (including the famous Penn Station in Manhattan), thousands of passenger cars, tens of thousands of freight cars, and a vast fleet of steam, electric, and diesel locomotives. The Pennsy’s 10,000 route-miles served thirteen of the most populous and most industrialized states in the United States. Pennsylvania Railroad examines the mighty railroad’s evolution from a disparate group of early horse car lines into a twentieth-century transportation giant. Color and black-and-white photographs and period ads illustrate the railroad’s many facets, including both its passenger and freight operations, as well its motive power through the decades. Though the Pennsy was merged out of existence in 1968, an epilogue details the PRR legacies that survive on today’s modern railroad scene.

This volume reproduces almost 100 remarkably detailed and texturally rich photographs. Essays by noted historians John Stilgoe, Mary Panzer, and Kenneth Finkel place Rau and his work in the context of the history of American advertising and landscape photography.