RAILROADING

Last week's post referred to information gleaned from the Bullis Room collection, to wit: "Much of the necessary documentation for the historic marker was provided by materials in the Bullis Room...."

Because so many of you indicated interest in the June 9th topic,  this week we are including a few of the railroading books in the Bullis Room that are available for your research and enjoyment. We say "a few" because there are lots of them. We'll give you a partial list and let you stop by and discover the rest.

Before embarking on any new project, we normally ask, "But what is this going to cost me?"  Therefore, we thought you'd want to take a look at:

The Economic Theory of the Location of Railways;

An Analysis of the Conditions Controlling the Laying Out of Railways ... 

By A. M. (Arthur Mellen) Wellington

Published in New York by J. Wiley & Sons, 1887

Then if we ask, "Is there a less expensive alternative to railroads?" we can find an answer (based on the year 1911 conditions) in this American Railroad's publication:

The Cost of Transportation on the Erie Canal and By Rail

By Association of American Railroads, 

Published in Washington D.C. by Bureau of Railway Economics, 1911

And there's also a book for those of us who want to find out more about how railroads are surveyed and constructed:

The Railroad Engineer's Practice:

Being a Short but Complete Description of the Duties of the

Young Engineer in Preliminary and Location Surveys and in Construction

by Thomas M. Cleeman

Published in New York by Engineering News Publ. Co., 1883

So there you have it -- three out of more than a dozen books on the topic of railroads. If you spend some time with them, you won't be disappointed.

RAILROADS, THEN (1869) AND NOW (2010)

On May 10, 1869, the first transcontinental railroad in the United States was completed with a golden spike driven in Promontory, Utah. Dreams, planning, dedication and hard work accomplished this event. One book in the Bullis Collection that was published by the United States War Department between 1855 and 1861 tells of the beginnings of this monumental project. It's spine title is: Report of explorations and surveys for economical route for a railroad. The full title reads:

Reports of explorations and surveys to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean / made under the direction of the Secretary of War, in 1853-5, according to acts of Congress of March 3, 1853, May 31, 1854, and August 5, 1854.

This book is available online (and in the Bullis Room, of course) and we recommend it to you for your reading list, as it gives a greater appreciation of the Utah event and of railroads in general.

And speaking of appreciating railroads, the engineers in the Bullis family in 1869 would have been interested in the news from Promontory, Utah because it fulfilled the hopes inherent in their library book. Today, they would be equally interested in this country's talk of high speed rail as well as a local county rail line that was officially opened this week on May 10, exactly 141 years after the driving of the Golden Spike.