The arrival of railroads in the Gulf Southwest marked a turning point in America's last frontier. Although the railroads were not the primary cause of westward expansion, they furnished the ways and means for hardy and courageous people, some from distant lands, to build and develop a vast new segment of a growing America. Then Came the Railroads: The Century from Steam to Diesel in the Southwest tells the story of these railroads and the people who built and followed them. American Indians, the land, and even the elements were hostile to the railroad builders, who laid thousands of miles of shining rails from Kansas and Missouri to the Gulf and from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Frontier settlers also faced hostile conditions, and they did not always see eye to eye with the railroads. But when faced with overwhelming odds, they joined forces and worked together to make the Southwest what it is today. The road was not easy. The railroads were torn by internal strife, and settlers met seemingly insurmountable obstacles: droughts, floods, and economic depression. Railroads and settlers depended on each other for existence, and with that realization came the answer to coexistence--friendly cooperation.

In the late 1980s, David Kahler was deeply inspired by seeing an exhibition of O. Winston Link photographs. He soon began making annual trips to the West Virginia and eastern Kentucky coalfields, destinations that strongly resonated with his own aesthetic of "place." Armed with a used Leica M6 and gritty Tri-X film, he and his wife made six week-long trips in the dead of winter to photograph trains along the Pocahontas Division of the Norfolk Southern Railway. Nearly one hundred images edited from this body of work form the core of The Railroad and the Art of Place, along with a selection of earlier Pennsylvania Railroad steam-era photographs that reflect Kahler's interest in the railroad landscape from an early age. Also included are three essays by Kahler, Scott Lothes, and Jeff Brouws, discussing the personal motivations, historical context, and aesthetic development behind the photography. With funding for printing provided by the Kahler Family Charitable Fund, all sales will go to support the Center's work.

The "iron horse" became a major weapon in the first war fully dependent on railroads. Moreover railroads would escalate and prolong the war. Leavy provides a study of trains in the Civil War through photographs and a rich narrative.

By the time of the Civil War, the railroads had advanced to allow the movement of large numbers of troops even though railways had not yet matured into a truly integrated transportation system. Gaps between lines, incompatible track gauges, and other vexing impediments remained in both the North and South. As John E. Clark explains in this compelling study, the skill with which Union and Confederate war leaders met those problems and utilized the rail system to its fullest potential was an essential ingredient for ultimate victory.

The opening of the world's first railroad in Britain and America in 1830 marked the dawn of a new age. Within the course of a decade, tracks were being laid as far afield as Australia and Cuba, and by the outbreak of World War I, the United States alone boasted over a quarter of a million miles. With unrelenting determination, architectural innovation, and under gruesome labor conditions, a global railroad network was built that forever changed the way people lived. From Panama to Punjab, from Tasmania to Turin, Christian Wolmar shows how cultures were enriched, and destroyed, by one of the greatest global transport revolutions of our time, and celebrates the visionaries and laborers responsible for its creation.