The Hocking Valley Railway [Hardcover]

Edward H. Miller (Author), H. Roger Grant (Introduction), Thomas W. Dixon Jr. (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2007

“The first comprehensive history of the Hocking Valley Railway ever published fills a gap in the literature. Miller has written the definitive history of this railroad,” says Richard Francaviglia, author of Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America's Historic Mining Districts. The Hocking Valley Railway was once Ohio's longest rail line, filled with a seemingly endless string of coal trains. Although coal was the main business, the railroad also carried iron and salt-and kept the finest passenger service in the State of Ohio. Despite the fact that the Hocking Valley was such a large railroad, with a huge economic and social impact, very little is known about it. The Hocking Valley Railway traces the journey of a company that began in 1867 as the Columbus and Hocking Valley, built to haul coal from Athens to Columbus. Extensions of the line and consolidation of several branches ultimately created the Columbus, Hocking Valley and Toledo. This was a 345-mile railway, extending from the Lake Erie port of Toledo through Columbus, and on to the Ohio River port of Pomeroy. The history of the Hocking Valley, as with other railroads, is one of boom times and depression. By the 1920s, the Hocking fields were largely depleted, and the mass of track south of Columbus became a backwater, while the Toledo Division boomed. The corporate name has been gone for more than three quarters of a century, but the Hocking Valley lives on as an integral part of railroad successor CSX. Historians and railroad enthusiasts will find much to savor in the story of this ever-changing company and the managers who ran it. The Hocking Valley Railway, complete with more than 150 photographs and illustrations, also documents a historic transformation in Midwest transportation from slow canalboats to speedy railcars. The author, Edward H. Miller is retired from Hocking Valley successor CSX. This is his first book, which has been over thirty years in the making.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Edward H. Miller is retired from Hocking Valley successor CSX. This is his first book, which has been over thirty years in the making.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Ohio University Press; annotated edition edition (January 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821416588
• ISBN-13: 978-0821416587
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #917,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Hocking Valley Railroad, June 26, 2007

By 

Fredrick Mapes "Fred Mapes" (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hocking Valley Railway (Hardcover)

The book is full of much good information and good reading. The only problem I had was that the maps are hard to read, with very fine print.
It is good reading and informative.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hocking Valley, an important Ohio coal hauler, December 2, 2008

By 

depot square (Ohio) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Hocking Valley Railway (Hardcover)

Edward Miller's "The Hocking Valley Railway" is an excellent overall study of an important and one-time significant coal hauler from the Hocking coal fields in southeast Ohio to Toledo. Connections via an Ohio River bridge brought additional overhead coal traffic from West Virginia mines.

Miller's book gives a straighforward history of the line and its predecessors, freight and passenger traffic, motive power, its merger into the C&O, and the eventual demise of portions of the line, as the mines and local industries played out. His writing style is easy to read and quite conversational. The book is an enjoyable read.

Published by Ohio University Press, the production value suffers from typical collegiate presses: the use of uncoated paper stock; muddy, fair-to-poor photograph reproduction; and almost unusable maps printed so finely and of such small size that labels and text are virtually indecipherable.

Tom Dixon, the noted C&O authority and Roger Grant, of Clemson University, contribute frontmatter to the book. Both men are well versed in railroad literature having each penned numerous well-received books on their own. Their presence lends authenticity to the content.

Despite the lower quality materials used by the publisher, Miller's work is an excellent study on this important and successful railroad and is recommended by this writer. No other significant work exists on the Hocking Valley.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How To Run a Railroad, February 12, 2007

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hocking Valley Railway (Hardcover)

The Hocking Valley Railway was one of those nice little railways that sprang up after the Civil War and before the big consoladations began in the early 1900's. The Hocking Valley was started with a definite plan. There was coal in the Hocking Valley and no way to get it to market. There was a market about a hundred miles away in Columbus. (This is all in Ohio.) The line got built and was profitable from day one.

Looking at a map of Ohio's railroads in 1865, almost all of them ran east to west. The only north-aouth route was in the extreme western part of the state from Cincinnati to Toledo. The Hocking Valley route ran from the southeastern part of the state to Toledo on Lake Erie at the western side of the state.

Eventually the Hocking Valley was to run 345 miles of track, all inside Ohio. By no means one of the big railroads, but a nice little one. Over the years stock in the Hocking Valley was purchased by other railroads so that by 1906 the Chesapeake and Ohio began to increase its interest in the road and in 1910 took over its operation.

This book is an excellent story of the financing, building and operation of a railroad.