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railroads

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    12/8/2022

    "Amtrak Joe" Leaves Rail Workers in the Dust

    by Kim Kelly

    Why did the "most pro-union president" in modern times push through a negotiated settlement rejected by the majority of railroad union members, and what would Eugene Debs think? 

  • SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
    9/15/2022

    Once More, Railroad Workers are Taking the Lead for American Labor

    by Nelson Lichtenstein

    Railroad companies' profits hinge on inhumane scheduling practices—cutting the workforce to the bone and squeezing everything possible out of those who remain—that will soon be part of every industry if workers aren't able to fight back. 

  • 8/14/2022

    Not All Roads Lead to Kashmir

    by Andrew Howard

    A recent tragedy on a historically contentious railway route shows that decisions about infrastructure development are made with symbolic and emotional considerations as well as pragmatic ones.

  • SOURCE: The Bitter Southerner
    8/4/2020

    Somebody Died, Babe: A Musical Coverup of Racism, Violence & Greed

    by Kevin Kehrberg & Jeffrey A. Keith

    The song "Swannanoa Tunnel" has been changed through generations of recordings by white musicians, concealing its origins as a song sung by Black convict-lease laborers who were forced to work in deadly conditions, often as punishment for minor crimes (or no crimes at all). 

  • SOURCE: NYT
    8-14-13

    Richard White: Elon Musk's Hyperloop's $6 billion price tag "just pie in the sky"

    Elon Musk, a serial entrepreneur who was a co-founder of PayPal and the electric car company Tesla Motors, sent people in California into a tizzy on Monday when he released a white paper outlining a hypothetical high-speed transportation system called the Hyperloop.There were a number of curious questions about the Hyperloop, which Mr. Musk’s white paper claims will be able to travel at up to 800 miles an hour and transport people from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. While physicists agree that technically, on paper, this is possible, economists seem to agree that technically, on paper, the price tag of $6 billion is impossible.

  • SOURCE: Clemson News
    8-14-13

    Clemson's Roger Grant receives book award

    CLEMSON — Clemson University history professor Roger Grant is the bronze winner of ForeWord Review’s Book of the Year Award for history. He won the accolade for his book "Railroads and the American People," a social history of the impact of railroads on American life, published in 2012 by Indiana University Press.“How the railroad has affected people has long intrigued me,” said Grant. “This book has allowed me the opportunity to explore that fascinating relationship.”The ForeWord Reviews’ Book of the Year Awards is judged by a select group of librarians and booksellers from around the country. There were 1,300 entries from more than 600 publishers and 248 winners were selected from 62 categories. Grant was the bronze winner in the genre of history....

  • SOURCE: Special to HNN
    2-19-13

    Murray Polner: Review of Sam Roberts's "Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America" (Grand Central Publishing, 2013)

    Murray Polner is a regular book reviewer for HNN.Compared to shabby and uninspiring Penn Station, Manhattan’s other train station on the west side of Manhattan, the latest version of Grand Central Terminal in chic East Midtown Manhattan, which includes Madison and Park Avenues and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, is a stunning work of architectural genius. New York Times reporter Sam Roberts’s Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America is beautifully illustrated with a very readable text, an appropriate acknowledgment of the hundredth anniversary of the station’s past and present.