Skip to main content

History Of Trains

April 2023
1min read

The American Railroad Freight Car: From the Wood-Car Era to the Coming of Steel

by John H. White, Jr., Johns Hopkins University Press, 644 pages

This extraordinarily comprehensive tome is for anyone who lived through the glory days of rail freight or simply wants to know more about it. For instance, White delves into the bizarre world of freight classification, where different goods were assessed different fees for the most arbitrary of reasons. This system eventually got so complicated that there were listings for such arcana as slippery elm bark and yak fat. After minutely describing the business aspects of a freight line and the life of its workers, the book goes even deeper into detail about particular types of specialized cars: eight-wheel gondolas and hoppers, refrigerators, livestock cars, as well as the familiar caboose. The technology of the cars receives similarly exhaustive treatment: thirty-seven pages on couplers and draft gears, for example.

White, who recently retired as curator of transportation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, has written a book that while eminently readable will also serve as a standard reference for decades. Whenever his successors need to know something about freight cars, White’s book will likely be the first place they turn. The same should be true for anyone interested in how a growing America was powered, built, and fed.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "April 1994"

Authored by: James W. Wensyel

Alone among all American battlefields, the scene of the Civil War’s costliest encounter is patrolled by government-licensed historians who keep alive for visitors the memory of what happened there

Authored by: The Editors

The American Gas Station: History and Folklore of the Gas Station in American Car Culture

Authored by: The Editors

The New Roadside America

Authored by: The Editors

Henry James: Collected Travel Writings

Authored by: The Editors

Crossing & Cruising

Authored by: The Editors

Kings in Disguise

Authored by: The Editors

Key West Tales

Authored by: The Editors

Viva Las Vegas: After-Hours Architecture

Authored by: The Editors

Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America

Authored by: The Editors

The Atomic Cafe

Featured Articles

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.