Railroads have played a major role in transportation, logistics and development in the state of Indiana. A perfect resource for railroad enthusiasts or students of Indiana history, Indiana Railroad Lines provides a comprehensive and detailed account of the railroad companies that operated in the state between 1838 and 1999 and the counties and towns they served. This volume provides the dates of the contraction, purchase, sale, lease and abandonment of the various railroad lines and is complete with charts and maps that provide information on the development and decline of railroads in the state.

Indiana Railroad Lines (Railroads Past and Present)

History

Meints, Graydon M.

Americas

Indiana University Press

Michigan Railroads and Railroad Companies is an invaluable reference manual for everyone interested in regional transportation history, the history of railroading, and Michigan history in general. It contains complete, cross-referenced listings for every company formed to operate a railroad in the state of Michigan. In addition to the comprehensive entries for major lines, Graydon Meints has included details about the many small, common-carrier steam and electric companies, logging roads, and numerous other primitive and contemporary rail systems. This encyclopedic reference guide also contains information on the so-called "paper railroads," companies that were projected but which never laid a foot of track. Michigan Railroads is divided into three parts. One includes alphabetical entries for the actual and intended railroad companies themselves, the date and purpose for their organization, and a brief history from their origins to their dispositions. Included in this portion of the work are a number of railroad "family trees" showing the corporate antecedents of the largest of the rail lines operating in the state today. Another contains a chronology of significant corporate events; it works as a useful finding aid for accessing source data contained in the first section. A third contains a statewide county-by-county listing of railroads, both paper and real.

Michigan Railroads & Railroad Companies (Trains and Railroads)

Biographies & Memoirs

Regional U.S.

Michigan State University Press

Michigan Railroad Lines covers each of Michigan’s “steam” and electric railroads, detailing every main and branch line of every railroad corporation that operated in the state by giving the stations and mileage of each. This detail also includes a list of the owners of each line. A chronology of the construction and abandonment of each line is included along with the changes in its mileage. For each railroad company there is a summary of all of the construction and abandonment and changes of mileage throughout its corporate life. The mileage of each company is brought together in a year-by-year table of railroad mileage in the state. A set of maps for each county in the state as well as several more detailed city maps show the extent of Michigan’s railroad network.

Michigan Railroad Lines: Volumes 1 & 2

An alphabetical listing of all named railroad locations on common carrier railroads in Michigan. Part 1 provides an alphabetical list of locations plus the county where located. Part 2 provides an alphabetical list of Lower Peninsular railroads and a listing, by county, of the named places in each county. Part 3 is similarly arranged for the Upper Peninsula. 303 pages.

Along the Tracks: A Dictionary of Named Places on Michigan Railroads

Reference

Clarke Historical Library

In this thoroughly researched history, Graydon Meints tells the fascinating story of the railroad’s arrival and development in Michigan. An engaging and accessible text, the book describes the long-awaited and often-troubled advent of the railroad in the state, the building of which shifted from private to public efforts and back again, amid tumultuous social, business, and political developments. The railroad would come to play a role in almost every critical event in Michigan’s history, including the Civil War, the Granger Movement, and the Gilded Age, before beginning to wane following the arrival of the automobile, the Interstate Commerce Commission, World War I, and the Great Depression. A brief growth spurt during World War II was short-lived, and it was followed by the collapse of several major railroads and the formation of Amtrak and Conrail. Looking ahead to the future of the railroad in the Great Lakes region, Meints assesses the strengths and shortcomings of this revolutionary invention. With careful attention to the personal impact of the railroad, Meints recognizes in brief biographies the many men and women responsible for the development and operation of Michigan railroads, as well as the triumphs, tragedies, and spaces that shaped their lives and work.

Railroads for Michigan

With roots in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Grand Rapids &amp; Indiana Railroad—nicknamed “The Fishing Line” for its connections to attractive Michigan tourist areas—was organized in the mid–nineteenth century to take advantage of the lucrative logging business of the vast forests of the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan and other potential freight traffic. Once built into northern Michigan, it had an important role in developing the region’s tourist industry. Financed and built by officials of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad system, the GR&amp;I eventually was merged into that company. Using a plethora of newspapers, public documents, and other primary source materials, Meints has crafted an engaging narrative that is easily accessible to the lay reader as well as specialists in railroad and local history. Tracing a thorough corporate history of a fascinating but little-known regional line from its beginning through the early twentieth century, The Fishing Line: A History of the Grand Rapids &amp; Indiana Railroad is a must-read.

The Fishing Line: A History of the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad

The Pere Marquette Railroad has not one but two histories--one for the twentieth century and one for the nineteenth. While the twentieth-century record of the Pere Marquette Railroad has been well studied and preserved, the nineteenth century has not been so well served. This volume aims to correct that oversight by focusing on the nineteenth-century part of the company's past, including the men who formed and directed these early roads, and the development of the system. The Pere Marquette Railroad was formed in 1900 by a merger of three Michigan railroad companies and lasted forty-seven years, disappearing in June 1947 by merger into the maw of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. Prior to the 1900 merger, the Pere Marquette Railroad's predecessors made up a motley collection of disconnected and unaffiliated short, local rail lines. After the financial panic of 1893, and with some commonality of ownership, the companies worked together more closely. Before the end of the decade, the three main railroads--the Flint & Pere Marquette; the Detroit, Lansing & Northern; and the Chicago & West Michigan--had decided that the only way to maintain solvency was to merge. Using a plethora of primary sources including railway timetables and maps, this work lends insight into the little-known corporate business history of the Pere Marquette Railroad.

Pere Marquette: A Michigan Railroad System before 1900

With more than two-thirds of Michigan's rail lines having been abandoned in the last hundred years, the remnants of Michigan's railroads fade into the past more and more. In this comprehensive atlas of Michigan's railroads, Graydon M. Meints compiles detailed railroad maps for each of Michigan's 83 counties. These maps show the common carrier railroads and the interurban lines of Michigan's once-vast railroad network including logging and mining roads. For cities and larger villages, several detailed maps have been included. The maps have been organized by county into five volumes. Volumes 1 - 4 include Lower Peninsula counties while maps for the Upper Peninsula are arranged in Volume 5.

Michigan Railroad Atlas Volume 1: Lower Peninsula Counties A - D

Atlases & Maps

Michigan State University Libraries

Michigan Railroad Atlas Volume 2: Lower Peninsula Counties E – K

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Meints, Graydon M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Meints, Graydon M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Meints, Graydon M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Indiana Railroad Lines (Railroads Past and Present)

Michigan Railroads & Railroad Companies (Trains and Railroads)

Michigan Railroad Lines: Volumes 1 & 2

Along the Tracks: A Dictionary of Named Places on Michigan Railroads

Along the Tracks: A Dictionary of Named Places on Michigan Railroads

Railroads for Michigan

The Fishing Line: A History of the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad

Pere Marquette: A Michigan Railroad System before 1900

Michigan Railroad Atlas Volume 1: Lower Peninsula Counties A - D

Michigan Railroad Atlas Volume 2: Lower Peninsula Counties E – K