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Loading... America's Fighting Railroads: A World War II Pictorial Historyby Don DeNevi
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This magnificent memoir is filled with photographs of various types of locomotives hauling military movements and wartime freight in the US, plus passenger trains turned troop carriers. Highly recommended. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)385.0973Social sciences Commerce, Communications, Transportation Trains and Railroads Subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography North America United StatesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The United States nationalized railways in WWI; this proved disastrous and the railroads were allowed to run themselves, with some direction from Washington, in WWII. The exceptions were the Alaska Railway and the White Pass and Yukon Railway, which were taken over by the United States Army when they proved unable to handle increased demand (all civilian employees were retained; the Army provided troops, rolling stock, and rebuilt the docks at Skagway).
In addition to military cargoes, railroads near the coasts had to handle traffic diverted from ships due to the threat of German and Japanese submarines. Some of the coastal railroads mounted special shields on locomotive headlights to reduce visibility to submarines.
One thing America’s Fighting Railroads and Trains to Victory have in common is very few pictures of actual military equipment, and what pictures there are usually show things from very early in the war – i.e., M3 Stuart and M3 Grant tanks, rather than Shermans. I expect this was due to military censors interdicting photography along railroad lines.
Since it’s supposed to be “pictorial”, there are enough pictures to satisfy the railroad enthusiast. Picture captions (although not the text) assume familiarity with railroad jargon, with pictured locomotives described (for example) as “yard goats” or “heavy drag hogs”. There’s no index or notes, but all the pictures have credits. ( )