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Landmarks on the Iron Road: Two Centuries of North American Railroad Engineering (Railroads Past and Present)

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This is a descriptive history of the major civil engineering projects in the development of North American railroads. Bill Middleton is unusually suited to the task at his hand. He is by academic training a civil engineer (R.P.I.), and a journalist (U. Wisc.). With a career that spans both military and academic times, he brings a special appreciation for this subject.

Landmarks of the Iron Road is something to be appreciated by civil engineers, railway historians, and those with an concern for the history of North American economic development. It is a careful collection of photographs and essays, supplemented with "how to find" these special locations. Middleton's book constitutes a "landmark" in the literary sense.

If you have any sense of wonder in you at all, this book should capture it. It is amazing the lengths people will go to to accomplish their goals. The great engineering feats of American history are ample evidence, and many of those feats were accomplished by private capital via the railroads. The illustrations in this book are excellent and really show how much work and ingenuity went into these projects. This book makes a nice complement to the Routledge Historical Atlas of American Railroads, which is also new.