railroad

This 180-page book is written for older children. The book tracks the adventures of an Irish American family, the Cullens, who were caught up in a competition between two railroad companies vying for government funding in the 1860s. Union Pacific was laying track westward from Omaha, Nebraska, while Central Pacific was laying track eastward from Sacramento, California. This work of historical fiction for young readers includes authentic details from the period.

The Caledonian railway, or The Caley as it was fondly named, was a Scottish railway system that connected Scotland to London from the 1840’s until its dissolution in the 1920’s. This compilation of book excerpts, articles, news clippings, and advertisements chronicles and romanticizes the waning decades of the Caledonian Railway from the turn of the century until 1923 when The Caley was absorbed into the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway by The Railways Act of 1921, an act that streamlined 120 individual British railway systems into just four.

This 1906 volume features essays written by notable travelers who visited the West, including John Wesley Powell (who was the first director of the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology and whom the Smithsonian's Anthropology Library is named after), artist Thomas Moran, geologist R.D. Salisbury, poet Harriet Monroe, and others. It is illustrated with many black and white photographs, showing the beauty and majesty of the Grand Canyon.