Whistle-stop posts along a picturesque cycling trail. An abandoned
roundhouse in a new industrial park. A piece of "Black Diamond"
anthracite coal lying in the grass. These are silent witnesses to the
golden age of American railroading, 1946, when the steam locomotive's
sonorous whistle could be heard from Pennsylvania to Vermont, from New
York to Chicago.
The second installation of Richard C. Carpenter's highly acclaimed
series covers an area criss-crossed by some of the oldest railroad lines
in America. This volume includes over 191 beautiful, hand-drawn maps of
rail systems in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. These masterpieces, accompanied by
detailed sections on stations, track pans, tunnels, and viaducts,
capture a time when rail was king in New England, before cars, trucks,
and planes became dominant.