The great achievement of American railroads was that they helped build the United States into a world power in less than a hundred years.

This golden age began in December 1830, when the first American built locomotive pulled the first train of cars ever moved by steam on track in the United States; and it ended in the 1920s with the advent of the internal combustion engine.

In The Golden Age of Railroads Stewart Holbrook tells the fascinating and inspiring story of the important part played in the development of the United States by the railroads.

The golden age has now passed, but the men of genius and vision who pioneered in building our great railroads will not be forgotten. Among them were Theodore D. Judah, William B. Ogden, Commodore Vanderbilt, and James J. Hill. Their stories are told here too, along with those whose inventions of safety tolls that marked the early years of railroading.

With his previous Landmark Books Stewart Holbrook proved that he knows how to make history come alive. Now he has done it again, and no reader of this book can fail to be moved to an appreciation of the part railroads played in the American Story.

From the dust jacket