The Hocking Valley Railway was once Ohio’s longest intrastate rail line, filled with a seemingly endless string of coal trains. Although coal was the main business, the railroad also carried iron and salt. 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 & 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 & 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, like that of other railroads, is one of boom times and depression. By the 1920s, the Hocking coalfields 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. The Hocking Valley Railway, complete with 150 photographs and illustrations, also documents a historic transformation in midwestern transportation from slow canalboats to fast passenger trains. Historians and railroad enthusiasts will find much to savor in the story of this ever-changing company and the managers who ran it.

What began as a study of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway stretched into more than a dozen contributions on Hawkeye state railroad topics. By 1969 Donovan had examined Iowa's “Little Three”: Chicago Great Western, Illinois Central, and Minneapolis & St. Paul as well as the state's “Big Four”: Chicago & North Western; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific; and Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific. In addition to these seven core carriers, Donovan covered the state's less prominent railroads: Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe; Great Northern; and Union Pacific and Wabash. Moreover, he contributed an issue on Iowa's principal interurbans, most of which survived into the 1950s as electric-powered freight-only short lines. In uniting Donovan's articles into a single volume, Iowa Railroads provides the most complete history of Iowa's rail heritage.

At the heart of this excellent book are the striking and rare postcards that provide a comprehensive visual review of this popular building type from coast to coast. Over 150 illustrations feature the gingerbread structures of the Northeast, the simple buildings of the Gold Rush West, and the mission-style stations of the Southwest in this first book to concentrate on this overlooked aspect of railroad history.

Few American states can match the rich and diverse transportation heritage of Ohio. Every major form of public conveyance eventually served the Buckeye state. From the “Canal Age” to the “Interurban Era,” Ohio emerged as a national leader. The state’s central location, abundant natural resources, impressive wealth, shrewd business leadership, and episodes of good fortune explain the dynamic nature of its transport past.

Ohio on the Move is the first systematic scholarly account of the transportation history of Ohio. To date, little has appeared on several subjects discussed here, including intercity bus and truck operations and commercial aviation. The more familiar topics of river and lake transport, canals, steam railroads, electric interurbans, and mass transit are extensively explored in the Ohio context.

In this inaugural volume of Ohio University Press’s Ohio Bicentennial Series, Professor Grant demonstrates the truth of the slogan that Ohio is “the heart of it all” - not solely by location but also in the impressive network of transportation arteries that have linked the state, whether natural waterways and air space or various artificial land-travel routes.

Out of the tradition of those long-gone days of great, heaving steam locomotives and endless rail lines comes this remarkable selection of vintage cards, a treasure trove selected from John Vander Maas' consummate collection at the University of Iowa Libraries.

This lavish volume is the first general book-length work devoted to the once-ubiquitous railroad picture postcard. It comprises an introductory essay and an album of cards. The former fully examines the nature of the postcard craze, which reached its zenith about 1910, and discusses why images of American railroads played such an important part in the card phenomenon. The album divides an engaging assortment of more than 150 representative views into five sections: “Trains and Rolling Stock,” “Depots and Railway Structures,” “The Railroad Corridor,” “People and Railroads,” and “The Lighter Side of Railroading.”

Railroad historians, train enthusiasts, postcard collectors, and all other readers will find much to interest them in this selection of images. Not only are the cards themselves visually striking, but they convey a sense of how important railroads once were to the nation's citizenry. The sight of steaming locomotives and the hustle and bustle associated with “train time” caused hearts to quicken. These feelings made views of railroad scenes popular with buyers of postcards and now with latter-day railroad fans and card collectors.

Historians of midwestern railroading during the early part of the twentieth century have generally focused on the production of railroad company histories while ignoring the regional view. Fortunately for railway historians and buffs, coincidentally with the zenith of the Railway Age, the national fad for producing and mailing postcards was at its height. Millions of cards, including "real-photo" images, were produced between 1905 and 1915. Roger Grant has selected more than a hundred representative picture postcards to visualize the principal themes and characteristics that gave this dynamic industry its distinctive regional features.

By the turn of the century, the railroad map of the Midwest was unequaled. Anyone who examined it carefully sensed that this was the vital center of America's massive network of steel rails. Depots erected in the western prairie environment were spartan, with only minor decoration, but those in the Midwest usually mirrored more ornate New England styles. These features are often reflected in the images in this heavily illustrated book, which depicts the spare but strong pioneering spirit of the enterprise.