A Celebration of the Iron Road

Railways have inspired artists for many years.

While the arrival of a train was depicted in an 1872 Japanese woodcut block and, five years later, in a Claude Monet painting, others focused on problems. Third-class train travelers, for instance, had little room to maneuver. And in the early days, everyone had to contend with smoky conditions caused by coal-burning boilers. 

The aforementioned appears in The Rise of the Railroad - How Trains Changed the World, and so do promotional posters, an attractive postage stamp commemorating mountain locomotives, and loads of photos.

The latter really bring history to life, starting with a horse-drawn line in Austria. Others range from railway employees offering a demonstration of hand signals to the interior of a Budapest underground station, illuminated by a glazed dome. 

The author is Christian Wolmar, whose source material includes his own series of railroad history books. His next book will be Fast Track: The Extraordinary Story of High Speed Rail. 

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