A pair of gleaming rails embedded in a farmhouse driveway. A wooded
cycling trail that traces an oddly level path through suburban hills. An
abandoned high fill that briefly parallels the interstate. Today, little
remains of the vast network of passenger and freight railroad lines that
once crisscrossed much of eastern and midwestern America. But in 1946,
the steam locomotive was king, the automobile was just beginning to
emerge from wartime restrictions, passenger trains still made stops in
nearly every town, and freight trains carried most of the nation's
intercity commerce.
In A Railroad Atlas of the United States in 1946, Richard C. Carpenter
provides a unique record of this not-so-distant time, when traveling out
of town meant, for most Americans, taking the train. The first volume of
this multivolume series covers the mid-Atlantic states and includes
detailed maps of every passenger railroad line in Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of
Columbia. When completed, the series will provide a comprehensive atlas
of the U.S. railroad system at its post-World War II high point--a
transportation network that many considered the finest railroad
passenger system in the world.
Meticulously crafted and rich in detail, these hand-drawn color maps
reveal with skilled precision--at a scale of 1 inch to 4 miles (or
1:250,000)--the various main and branch railroad passenger and freight
lines that served thousands of American towns. The maps also include
such features as long-since-demolished steam locomotive and manual
signal tower installations, towns that functioned solely as places where
crews changed over, track pans, coaling stations, and other
rail-specific sites.
Currently, there exists no comprehensive, historic railroad atlas for
the U.S. This volume, with its 202 full-scale and detail maps, is sure
to remain the standard reference work for years to come, as will the
others to follow in the series.
