The 3rd edition of a railroad classic, Lost Railroads of New England comprises a summary of the rise and fall of New England's railroads and a fully annotated directory of all abandoned segments of every common carrier railroad in New England, updated through January 1, 2010. This edition features all new maps showing rail trails as well as abandonments, with detailed city maps for areas of dense railroad activity; new sections on rail trails and lines that have been reinstated; many more photographs of trails and rail artifacts on abandoned lines; and many directory entries rewritten for better clarity and expanded with new information.

For over 100 years, the railroads of America were the king of transportation. But more than that, they were truly what drove the Industrial Revolution, and along with that, the growth of the country. Railroads made communities from nothing, grew sleepy crossroad towns into major hubs of commerce, and opened areas of Delmarva to goods they once could only read about in magazines and newspapers. By the 1960s, all of this had changed. Passenger service had fallen off to the point that most railroads had ended this once vital travel method. Trucks now hauled the goods that once filled the boxcars of the railroad. Many old rail lines closed. The rails and stations were abandoned to the state governments. Most were just left in place to rust and rot away. This book resurrects those abandoned rails and railroad companies. Photos of the stations, once the center of their town's growth, are preserved in these pages. Memories of the companies that crisscrossed Delmarva are brought back to life.

Details the history of railroad closings and their impact on the railroad traffic running from the industrial North and East to the agricultural South and West.

If, as Wallace Stegner said, the national park is “the best idea we ever had,” the rail-trail is certainly a close runner-up. Part transportation corridor, part park, the rail-trail has revolutionized the way America creates high-quality, car-free pathways for bicyclists, runners, walkers, equestrians, and more. It was only a few decades after railroad barons had run roughshod over America’s economy and politics that they began to shed nearly one hundred thousand miles of unneeded railroad corridor. At the same time, bicyclists were being so thoroughly pushed off ever-more-intimidating roadways they came close to extinction. Through political organizing and lawyerly grit, an unlikely, formerly marginalized advocacy arose, seized on seemingly worthless strips of land, and created a resource that is treasured by millions of Americans today for recreation, purposeful travel, tourism, conservation, and historical interpretation. From Rails to Trails is the fascinating tale of the rails-to-trails movement as well as a consideration of what the continued creation of rail-trails means for the future of Americans’ health, nonmotorized transportation networks, and communities across the country.

In Abandoned Tracks, W. Thomas Mainwaring bridges the gap between scholarly and popular perceptions of the Underground Railroad. Historians have long recognized that many aspects of the Underground Railroad have been mythologized by emotion, memory, time, and wishful thinking. Mainwaring’s book is a rich, in-depth attempt to separate fact from fiction in one local area, while also contributing to a scholarly discussion of the Underground Railroad by placing Washington County, Pennsylvania, in the national context. Just as the North was not consistent in its perspective on the Civil War and the slavery issue, the Underground Railroad had distinct regional variations. Washington County had a well-organized abolition movement, even though its members helped a comparatively small number of fugitive slaves escape, largely because of the small nearby slave population in what was then western Virginia. Its origins as a slave county make it an interesting case study of the transition from slavery to freedom and of the origins of black and white abolitionism. Abandoned Tracks lends much to the ongoing scholarly debate about the extent, scope, and nature of the Underground Railroad. This book is written both for scholars of abolitionism and the Underground Railroad and for an audience interested in local history.