This is very much a selective bibliography, mainly mentioning books I have used as source material, since there are literally tens of thousands of books on the railroads. Many of these are very detailed and written for a specialist audience, and have consequently not been included in this list. The list is, therefore, aimed at the general reader who wants to know more on the subjects covered in this book, rather than at a specialist audience.
I have, of course, made extensive use of my own series of six railroad history books, all published by Atlantic. The Subterranean Railway (2004, updated 2013) is the story of the London Underground, Fire and Steam (2006) covers the story of Britain’s railroads, and Blood, Iron and Gold (2008) shows how the railroads changed the world. Engines of War (2010) demonstrates the importance of railroads in wartime while The Great Railway Revolution (2012) is the story of American railroads; To the Edge of the World (2013) is the history of the world’s longest railroad, the Trans-Siberian.
GENERAL
Erwin Berghaus, The History of the Railways,
Barrie & Rockliffe, 1964
Anthony Burton, Railway Empire, John Murray, 1994
Anthony Burton, On the Rails, Aurum, 2004
Christopher Chant, The World’s Railways, Grange, 2002
Basil Cooper, A Century of Train, Brian Trodd Publishing, 1988
Nicholas Faith, Locomotion, BBC Books, 1993
Nicholas Faith, The World the Railways Made, Bodley Head, 1990
Tim Fischer, Trains Unlimited, ABC Books, 2011
Geoffrey Freeman Allen, Railways Past, Present and Future, Orbis Publishing, 1982
Geoffrey Freeman Allen, Railways of the Twentieth Century, Winchmore, 1983
Geoffrey Freeman Allen, Luxury Trains of the World, Bison, 1979
Jim Harter, World Railways of the Nineteenth Century: A Pictorial History in Victorian Engravings, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005
Clive Lamming, Larousse des Trains et des Chemins de Fer, Larousse, 2005
Bryan Morgan, ed, Great Trains, Crown Publishers, 1973
O.S. Nock, World Atlas of Railways, Mitchell Beazley, 1978
O.S. Nock, Railways Then and Now: A World History, Paul Elek Ltd, 1975
O.S. Nock, ed, Encyclopaedia of Railways, Book Club Associates, 1977
Martin Page, The Lost Pleasures of the Great Trains, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975
Steve Parissien, Station to Station, Phaidon, 1997
P.J.G. Ransom, Locomotion: Two Centuries of Train Travel, Sutton Publishing, 2001
Michael Robbins, The Railway Age, Penguin, 1965
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century, Berg, 1996
John Westwood, Railways at War, Osprey, 1980
John Westwood, The Pictorial History of Railways, Bison Books, 2008
EUROPE
H.C. Casserly, Outline of Irish History, David & Charles, 1974
Nicholas Faith, The Right Line: the Politics, the Planning and the Against-the-odds Gamble Behind Britain’s First High-speed Railway, Segrave Foulkes, 2007
Peter Fleming, The Fate of Admiral Kolchak, Rupert Hart David, 1963 (reprinted 2001 by Birlinn)
Murray Hughes, Rail 300, David & Charles, 1988
P.M. Kalla-Bishop, Italian Railroads, Drake, 1972
P.M. Kalla-Bishop, Mediterranean Island Railways, David & Charles, 1970
Allan Mitchell, The Great Train Race: Railways and Franco-German Rivalry, Berghahn, 2000
O.S. Nock, Railways of Western Europe, A&C Black, 1977
Brian Perren, TGV Handbook, Capital Transport, 1998
Albert Schram, Railways and the Formation of the Italian State in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 1977
Christine Sutherland, The Princess of Siberia,
Methuen, 1984
Various authors, Histoire du Réseau Ferroviaire Français, Editions de l’Ormet, 1996
Various authors, ICE: High-Tech on Wheels,
Hestra-Verlag, 1991
Arthur J. Veenendaal, Railways in the Netherlands: A Brief History, 1834–1994, Stanford University Press, 2001
THE AMERICAS
Dee Brown, Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: Railroads in the West, Touchstone, 1977
David Cruise and Alison Griffiths, Lords of the Line: The Men Who Built the Canadian Pacific Railway, Viking, 1988
Brian Fawcett, Railways of the Andes, Plateway Press, 1997
Sarah H. Gordon. Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929, Elephant Paperbacks, 1997
George W. Hilton and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America, Stanford University Press, 1960
Stewart H. Holbrook, The Story of American Railroads, Bonanza Books, 1947
Theodore Kornweibel Jr, Railroads in the African American Experience, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010
Oscar Lewis, The Big Four, Alfred A. Knopf, 1938
Albro Martin, Railroads Triumphant, Oxford University Press, 1992
Nick and Helma Mika, The Railways of Canada: A Pictorial History, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972
O.S. Nock, Railways of Canada, A&C Black, 1973
Andrew Roden, Great Western Railway: A History, Aurum, 2010
David Rollinson, Railways of the Caribbean, Macmillan, 2001
D. Trevor Rowe, The Railways of South America, Locomotives International, 2000
John F. Stover, American Railroads, University of Chicago Press, 1961
Richard White, The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, Norton, 2011
Oscar Zanetti and Alejandra García, Sugar and Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837–1959, University of North Carolina Press, 1998
ASIA
Ralph William Huenemann, The Dragon and the Iron Horse: The Economics of Railroads in China, 1876–1937, Harvard University Press, 1984
Robert Hardie, The Burma Siam Railway, Quadrant Books, 1984
Ian J. Kerr, Engines of Change: The Railways that Made India, Praeger, 2007
Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850–1900, Oxford University Press, 1995
Abrahm Lustgarten, China’s Great Train: Beijing’s Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet, Henry Holt, 2008
Deborah Manley, ed, The Trans-Siberian Railway: A Traveller’s Anthology, Century Hutchinson, 1987
Steven G. Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917, Cornell University Press, 1991
James Nicholson, The Hejaz Railway, Stacey International, 2005
O.S. Nock, Railways of Asia and the Far East, A&C Black, 1978
Peter Semmens, High Speed in Japan, Platform 5, 2000
Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas, Our Indian Railway, Foundation Books, 2006
Shoji Sumita Success Story, the privatisation of Japanese National Railways, Profile Books, 2000
John Tickner, Gordon Edgar, and Adrian Freeman, China: The World’s Last Steam Railway, Artists’ and Photographers’ Press, 2008
Harmon Tupper, To the Great Ocean, Secker & Warburg, 1965
K.R. Vaidyanathan, 150 Glorious Years of Indian Railways, English Edition Publishers, 2003
Christopher J. Ward, Brezhnev’s Folly: The Building of the BAM and Late Soviet Socialism, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009
Various authors, Guide to the Great Siberian Railway, 1900, David & Charles reprints, 1971
AFRICA
John Day, Railways of South Africa, Arthur Barker, 1963
M.F. Hill, The Permanent Way: The Story of the Tanganyika Railways, East African Railways and Harbours, 1958
George Tabor, Cape to Cairo, Genta, 2003
AUSTRALASIA
Neill Atkinson, Trainland, Random House, 2007
Tim Fischer, Transcontinental Train Journey, Allen & Unwin, 2004
C.C. Singleton and David Burke, Railways of Australia, Angus & Robertson, 1963
Patsy Adam Smith, The Desert Railway, Rigby 1974
Patsy Adam Smith, Romance of Australian Railways, Rigby, 1973