All aboard! This train travels through history making stops in time to
learn about the progress of travel by rail.
Hop up into the cab of a speeding modern-day locomotive and look down
the tracks into the past. Perhaps these are the same tracks that the
diesel-electric locomotives of thirty years ago thundered down, pulling
their loads. Perhaps you can see the steam engines of thirty years
before that. Watch time unravel and the landscape change as the history
of trains barrels through the pages of STEAM, SMOKE AND STEEL: BACK IN
TIME WITH TRAINS.
The first trains puffed great billowing clouds of smoke and showered
passengers with burning embers as they sped down the rails at a
pulse-pounding twenty miles an hour! By the 1850's, however, trains were
traveling much faster, much farther, and much cleaner and train travel
contributed to the growth of our nation. Young readers will be
fascinated by the exciting -- and sometimes dangerous -- story of trains
while they learn about the different kinds of engines, equipment, and
jobs necessary for operating trains throughout history. The young
narrator introduces readers to trains from the time of his
great-great-great-great-great grandfather at the turn of the nineteenth
century to his father's train of today, showing the great changes that
invention and progress have brought over time.
Patrick O'Brien's striking illustrations emphasize the beauty, grandeur,
and romance of the train. Detailed and richly textured oil paintings
take readers on a trip through time to ride aboard open-air cars, travel
through mountain passes, and roar down the rails on high-speed bullet
trains. Budding engineers will love getting a glimpse at the past and
dreaming about the future of trains.
